Williams boss James Vowles has offered an ‘update’ on Alex Albon’s chassis after his crash at the Australian GP and Logan Sargeant’s hopes for racing in the Japanese GP.
The Grove squad could only enter one car to race in Melbourne last week as Albon wrote off his FW46. A huge crash during first practice for the Australian GP saw the 28-year-old miss FP2 before Vowles made the dreaded decision to sideline Sargeant for the rest of the event.
Vowles begrudgingly withdrew Sargeant from the Australian GP so Albon could race with his car. Williams did not take a spare chassis having failed to build it after falling behind over the winter. Their team principal also called it ‘unacceptable’ to not have a third chassis available.
Williams rued their winter failings after Alex Albon’s Australian GP crash
Sargeant, thus, could not race through no fault of his own and Albon failed to score Williams any points in the Australian GP. The 28-year-old came home in P11 from P12 on the grid and Albon nearly had another huge crash during qualifying. He came close to disaster during Q1.
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Another crash would have made Williams’ nightmare weekend even worse after puncturing a hole in Albon’s first chassis. The London-born Thai also split the gearbox in half, damaged the engine and tore the front-right wheel off after hitting the wall at high speed during FP1.
Albon was helpless to avoid his crash during FP1 for the Australian GP after losing control of his Williams when it snapped on landing from taking too much kerb at Turn 7. But the crash raised concerns that Williams might even have to withdraw Sargeant from the Japanese GP.
James Vowles rates Logan Sargeant’s chances of racing in the Japanese GP
Formula 1 goes to Suzuka next week, so Albon writing his chassis off at the Australian GP left Williams with a race against time to repair a car for Sargeant to use at the Japanese GP. Now, team principal Vowles has given an update on the Grove squad’s progress back at their base.
Vowles believes Williams’ quick work in Melbourne to assess Albon’s chassis before flying it back to England should give Sargeant a good chance of doing the Japanese GP. The Grove squad will want to have both cars in Suzuka having not yet scored a single point this season.
“I’m confident we’ll be able to fix the chassis,” Vowles told Williams’ YouTube channel. “We put measures in place to make sure the chassis was back here pretty early on Monday morning. I think it arrived around 2am or so.
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“Since then, there was all the crews inside the building working on that, stripping it down and doing repairs. And, just an update, today we’re in a good place for having the chassis back early enough for Suzuka.
“So, a lot of the work was done back in Melbourne. There were photographs and techniques called NDT (non-destructive testing). So, there’s various wands you can do there. But it allows us to fully understand how big the damage is and what he have to do.
“And that preparation was key. What it meant was, already at 2am on Monday, work could start. It wasn’t a reflection of what was happening. It was more, ‘This is what we’re doing and this is how we’ll execute it’. So, in Suzuka, we’ll have two cars without too many issues.”
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Sargeant will, no doubt, hope to prove his worth to Williams at the Japanese GP after being benched for Albon to use his car at the Australian GP. The 23-year-old may also hope to put last year’s woes behind him after crashing in qualifying and retiring from September’s meet.
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