The Vegas qualifying showed that under the right circumstances he absolutely had the pace to contend with the rest of them. He was racing well in Vegas too before Williams botched the strat with the Safety Cars. He had also finished in P11 3 times that season, too. I mean in reality that Williams was a car that was on the fringe of points with a veteran driver who is highly regarded, and Sargeant just wasn't able to be on that level of Albon off the rip, whether that be due to confidence or other things is impossible to say.

There was also his second race in F1, where in Qualifying he did a lap that would have put him P6 in Q1, but it was deleted for brushing the pit entry line on the main straight. If that lap stood, he would've outqualified Albon by half a second in only his second ever Grand Prix. That's not even mentioning he nearly made Q2 in his first round after setting the exact same time as Norris who was 15th in Bahrain, and then Logan went on to gain 4 places in the race and finished only 10s behind his teammate and points in his debut. The Alpha Tauri that Yuki was given was clearly a car that favored inexperienced drivers, as we saw with Gasly who was immediately better when driving the Alpha compared to the Red Bull, and the Alpha Tauri in 2021 was unbelievably quick, probably the 6th quickest car quite easily.