F1 News: Williams Faces Major Issue After 'Brutal' Brazilian GP

Saajan Jogia | Nov 8, 2024

James Vowles - Williams Racing / Williams Racing Press Image

The Williams F1 team has reported that it is assessing its spare parts situation for the upcoming round at Las Vegas after a disastrous Sao Paulo Grand Prix, where both Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto suffered heavy crashes. However, the problems actually stem from Mexico, where Albon suffered a huge crash.

If Albon's major crash in FP1 wasn't challenging enough, his Mexico City Grand Prix came to an abrupt end following a collision with VCARB's Yuki Tsunoda. The following weekend at Interlagos proved no better, as Albon suffered a heavy crash in qualifying. With qualifying postponed to Sunday due to adverse weather, his team faced the impossible task of repairing the FW46 F1 car in time for the Grand Prix.

Although Colapinto managed to start Sunday's race, which saw numerous yellow flags, he crashed out midway, causing significant damage to his car. The incident brought out the red flags, and the race was eventually restarted.

Fortunately, the drivers were left unharmed after both intense weekends, but Williams team principal James Vowles has revealed that amid a shortage of spares, the team has been working to put the cars back into their best form for the race on the Las Vegas Strip. Speaking in his post-race review on the Williams App, Vowles was questioned about the current situation on spares. He said:

"There's no team on the grid that can cope with five major accidents in two race weekends. Simply the matter of spares we carry are not sufficient to carry that amount of attrition. 

"Vegas, I have high hopes for. We were fast there last year, and I'm confident the car will work well in those conditions.

"So we will do our absolute utmost to get two cars to the best specification they can be, with sufficient spares around us to make that happen.

"What that looks like is difficult to predict. We're still getting the items back from Brazil and determining what we have to do in terms of construct and build in order to give ourselves the best possible scenario."

Vowles emphasized that while the Brazilian GP was just one race weekend, it was "brutal" enough to cause huge damage to a team going through transformation in all areas. He explained:

"The Brazil weekend was probably the most brutal that I can remember across my entire career. In the space of seven days, a little more than, we had five major accidents. In Brazil alone between qualifying the race three.

"That's an amount that near enough no one can sustain on the grid.

"This team is going through the process of rebuilding itself into a state where it can win races in the future. That doesn't happen overnight.

"It doesn't happen without significant change throughout an organization, and this one race is simply just a blip in what is a grand scheme of a multi-year programme.

"It doesn't mean it hurts any less. It's something that hurts tremendously as I'm talking to you now.

"But I want us to be successful and performant. I came here not to be fighting for the odd point, but rather fighting for wins and more in the future. And that can't be achieved without some level of compromise along the way, without rebuilding an organisation.

"So yes, it's painful what happened last weekend, but it hasn't changed what our destination is. In fact, it's rooted me even further more to the fact of what we have to do to achieve it is significant, but we can achieve it together as a team."