22/11/2024
NEWS STORY
James Vowles has revealed that the repair bill following Williams disastrous Interlagos weekend was in excess of $3m.
Indeed, Mexico a week earlier was little better, with the Grove outfit suffering five crashes across the two weekends.
Other than the sheer cost of the repairs, the team was forced to salvage old parts at a time it was hoping to develop updates, all while adhering to the budget cap.
So bad was the situation that in Brazil, Alex Albon was unable to participate in the race after crashing out of qualifying.
"You are into the millions, less than 10 but more than three," team boss James Vowles told ESPN. "It's big numbers when you calculate where we are at the moment.
"The sustained damage we had across Mexico and Brazil, I hadn't experienced anything like that in 25 years of working in the sport," he admitted, "to have five major accidents in two races... It's hard to apportion fault or otherwise to it, that's just motor racing, but five... That took out five front wings, five floors, five rear wings, three gearboxes, two engines, two chassis. An amount that you just can't believe."
Thanks to a "gargantuan effort" by the team at Grove, Williams arrived in Las Vegas with both cars updated to the latest spec. However, with three races remaining, Vowles hopes there are no repeats.
"To turn that around to have here in Las Vegas two cars completely updated on the right specification, albeit not with a huge amount of spares behind that, it's not just a huge effort, it's a gargantuan effort of the whole team pulling together.
"What I'm proud of is, in this moment when you really are down, you're on your knees and kicked in the stomach, the team rose up stronger than it was before and wanted to come here and prove to the world that we are still here and fight for everything we can fight until the end of the championship. It was a proud moment to be leading the team in that moment."
As for spares...
"I don't have exactly what I'd like, because I'd like far more spares than I have," he admitted. "But we have sufficient parts for the two cars here and there are a selection of spares around as well, it's not that the two cars you see here is all the bits we have.
"We're at a point now where, at the last three races of the year, if I produce, for example, five front wings, that's 2025 I'm compromising as a result, so we have to balance between the two.
"If we have accidents like Brazil we are going to be in dire trouble, but hopefully that's a one off."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Las Vegas here.