The American rookie was able to take advantage of the unexpectedly good form of the Williams at the Dutch GP venue, which also propelled his team-mate Alex Albon to fourth on the grid.
Sargeant got through a wet Q2 in an encouraging 10th place but then crashed heavily on slicks early in the final segment of qualifying. He thus finished last in the session and will start Sunday’s race from 10th.
“It's just tough, fine margins in those conditions,” he said when asked by Autosport about his mixed fortunes. “Last thing I ever want to do is leave the team with a boatload of damage, but I'm doing my best to deliver good results.
“I think there's been so many positives this weekend, yesterday in the dry I feel like I was really pretty much right there. I think long run pace was really good. We've had the car in a great window.
“Even Q1, Q2, I missed a little bit of pace today in the wet. But I think the biggest positive for me is delivering laps when I needed to. And that's something I've lacked this year. And to be able to do that has been really nice today. But it's all just shadowed by a millimetre mistake.”
He added: “I know in full dry conditions, I'm really close now, which is a huge positive for me. I'm starting to understand how to extract all the time from the car.
“Going into that Q3 session, I knew we had a great chance as Alex just showed. We had a really good car in the dry and that's what makes it even more painful to make that mistake. But I'll live and learn. I'll move on, and not dwell on it for tomorrow."
Sargeant's rookie season has seen several major accidents that have been expensive for the team. “I know those mistakes are costly," he said. "It's not what I'm trying to do, of course. I mean, moving forward I have to dial those out, that's for sure, it's essential. It's a tough one.
“This track is tight, narrow. There was barely one car width on a dry line, and all it takes is to be a millimetre offline and there's no saving it.”
Sargeant admitted that Williams doesn’t fully understand why the car is so competitive on a track that wasn’t supposed to suit it. “I don't think we're completely sure,” he said. “We didn't expect this to be a great one for us, but I think it's important to understand why. So that's something we'll dig into.
“Just mixed emotions, definitely bittersweet. I think from my point of view, I need to look back at it, see what I did wrong, first of all, see if it was just a tiny mistake that was unavoidable, or if it was a mindset thing. I haven't quite understood it yet, but I need to figure that out and then not dwell on it, because our long run pace was great yesterday.
"And hopefully get the car rebuilt as close as we can and try to utilise that with the good long run pace that we had and try to score some points. That's the goal. I put myself in this position to be in the top 10. I've also put the team in a position with a damaged car. So there's ups and downs. You've got to take them as they come, roll with the punches.”
