30/03/2024
NEWS STORY
James Vowles confirms that Williams will have cars for both its drivers in Japan, but admits that there will be no spare.
The news follows last weekend's Australian Grand Prix when Logan Sargeant was withdrawn and his car given over to his teammate, Alex Albon after the Thai driver crashed in opening practice.
The admission that there was no spare was a major embarrassment for the team, indeed the sport, coming days after Vowles had admitted that spare parts were tracked using an Excel spreadsheet.
"I'm confident we'll be able to fix the (damaged) chassis," said Vowles in a debrief for the team's website. "We put measures in place to make sure the chassis was back here (at the team's Grove HQ) pretty early on Monday morning, I think it arrived at around 2 a.m.
"In Suzuka we'll have two cars without too many issues," he added. "We won't have a spare chassis in Japan. The original plan before the season started was to have three chassis as you would expect at round one and that gently slipped towards round three as items became more and more delayed.
"Since then, and especially with the work we're doing now on chassis number two, there is again going to be a small amount of delay. That said, we will have a third chassis soon.
"The gearbox was cracked in two, the engine mounts were completely bent, and the engine's done, fundamentally," he revealed. "The chassis, on the front-right corner where the suspension goes in, is torn apart, is the best way to describe it. I can put my finger into the chassis... which you shouldn't be able to do, just for clarity.
"The team's been brilliant in working with the structures and stresses department and with the design office," he added. We have teams already working on it in order to get it repaired, but until they see it in person, it will be very difficult, they're doing things by photo that we've done here, but there's four or five mitigation plans in place for it.
"It's hard until I get the chassis physically back to give you a full acknowledgement of how difficult it would be," he admitted. "It should all be achievable. The car had to leave by Saturday to make it back on time, which gives us near enough a week, and that's a sufficient amount of time. However, no one can give you 100 percent certainty. What I can tell you is based on the evidence that we have so far and the work that's completed, everything looks completely feasible.
"I've seen chassis in worse states come back from this. 100 percent is a difficult number to give you, and as a statistics man, I wouldn't say 100 percent, but I would say there is a very high probability it will all be fine."
Referring to the decision to withdraw Sargeant, which he admits is the hardest call he's had to make in his career, Vowles said: "The whole world has seen where we are in reality and how far behind we are and what work we have to do to move forward."
With China just two weeks after Japan, the pressure will be on the team to get that chassis finished as soon as possible, however, adding to the fun and games is the fact that Shanghai, which returns to the schedule for the first time since 2019, is a Sprint weekend, thereby raising the risks of a further incident considerably.