Williams Formula 1 boss James Vowles has revealed that the team is on course to have the chassis damaged in Australia repaired in time for the Japanese Grand Prix.
The Grove-based squad was placed in the situation where it had one car running in last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix following Alex Albon’s crash in opening practice.
Williams had cut it tight with deadlines to assemble its revamped FW46 challenger, which has left the team without a spare chassis for the first race of the 2024 season.
With the damage irreparable at the Albert Park Circuit overnight, Logan Sargeant was placed on the sidelines as Williams handed his chassis to Albon for the third round.
Vowles has disclosed that the impaired chassis was now back at the team’s base and on course to be fixed in time for both drivers to compete at Suzuka next weekend.
“I’m confident we’ll be able to fix the chassis,” Vowles said in a video posted on social media.
“We put measures in place to make sure the chassis was back here very early on Monday morning. I think it arrived around 2 a.m. or so.
“Since then there was all the crews inside the building working on that, stripping it down and doing repairs.
“Just an update today, we’re in a good place for having the chassis back early enough for Suzuka.”
Vowles has divulged that the mechanics were able to get an element of the rebuild started in Melbourne prior to it being flown back to its factory in the United Kingdom.
“A lot of work was done back in Melbourne,” he continued. “There was photographs and techniques called NDT, which is Non-Destructive Testing.
“So there’s various ones you can do there but it allows us to fully understand how big the damage is and what we have to do. That preparation was key.
“What it meant was already at 2 a.m. on Monday, work could start. It wasn’t then a reflection on what was happening, it was more, this is what we’re doing and this is how we execute it.
“So in Suzuka, we’ll have two cars without too many issues.”
However, the setback imposed from repairing the damaged chassis means Williams will head to the challenging Suzuka circuit without a spare tub available again.
Therefore, a repeat of Logan Sargeant’s shunt last season could witness the British outfit being placed in the same unwelcome predicament as it was last weekend.
“We will definitely have two chassis in Japan, but no, I don’t think that third chassis because the workload we now have on because of this change will push it back,” Vowles explained.
“There’s a finite amount of resource. You can either put it into making sure we have two cars built up with the correct amount of spares in Japan or the additional chassis.”
Vowles had elected to hand Williams’ one remaining chassis to Albon as he constituted the team’s best chance of landing a vital point to move up the order in the standings.
Although Albon would fall one place short as severe graining hampered his prospects, Vowles has asserted he “wouldn’t have made” the choice unless it was the right one.
“Even the probability of scoring a point is what’s important to me at the moment,” he added.
“I have hard decisions to make and mine is for the wellbeing of this organisation as a whole. And that is I’ll do everything it takes to score the point if it is available to us.”
