Alex Albon admits question he’s ‘worried about’ after latest Williams chassis incident

Alex Albon’s car is on its way back to Williams’ Grove headquarters for a full damage check with the driver admitting he’s worried about the state of his chassis after his Japanese Grand Prix crash.

Short on parts, and most notably a third chassis, for the opening rounds of the 2024 championship, Williams suffered the embarrassment of having to boot Logan Sargeant out of his FW46 in Australia to give the car to Albon.

‘It’s difficult and the impact of it will be what you expect’

Although it was the Thai-British racer who crashed in practice, punching a hole in his chassis, it was Sargeant who paid the price for the team’s lack of parts.

Moving onto Japan, Albon kept hold of Sargeant’s chassis with the American given Albon’s repaired one at 100g heavier.

Williams, though, once again found themselves in the barriers, this time through no fault of the drivers.

Racing for position on the opening lap of the Suzuka race, Albon drew up to the inside of Daniel Ricciardo’s VCARB01 only for the RB driver to move right and make contact with the Williams.

Both drivers were off the track and into the barriers as Albon crashed nose-first into a tyre wall.

With the team failing to build a spare chassis, his is now on its way back to Grove for checks before the Chinese Grand Prix.

However, should Williams need to repair the chassis, it could yet delay their build on a spare, even spare parts.

“It’s exactly what we don’t need,” said Albon. “The impact itself was relatively low speed, but it’s the way that I hit the tyre wall.

“Normally, we have these kind of plastic barriers, the Armco. But this was much more dug in and it really stops very violently.

“They’re the questions I’m worried about, not for me, but for the car, because that’s where you can do damage.”

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For team boss James Vowles, it has been a tough two weeks with the latest crash drama now added.

The former Mercedes man admits Williams’ crashes are hampering their attempts to update the car.

“The last two weeks have been tough,” Vowles told the official F1 channel. “I think, take any team, to have three major accidents where you pretty much take out all the equipment on the car is enormous.

“Taking that across the season, you can deal with it. Taking it across just a few races, it’s difficult and the impact of it will be what you expect.

“We’re making spares as quickly as possible in the background but ultimately performance will have an impact on that.

“We can’t bring as many updates. The updates that were on the car, unfortunately, are broken. So we’ve got to build those stocks back up and get going again.”

No action was taken against Ricciardo or Albon, with stewards deeming it as a typical first-lap incident.

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