Melbourne's nightmare
The trip to Melbourne and the subsequent return home were far from pleasant for the team Williams. James Vowles' team, among the positive surprises of the 2023 season, has instead experienced some days truly to forget in Australia. L'Alex Albon accident in FP1 caused serious damage to the chassis which prevented the team from proceeding immediately with the repairs.
The absence of a spare chassis forced the historic British team to take part in the qualifications and the race with only one single-seater and Vowles himself decided not to let the American Logan Sargeant race, giving Albon the opportunity to race with his teammate's chassis. The choice, highly criticized by fans, did not bring appreciable results given that Albon still failed to collect championship points.
Two cars on track in Japan, but no spare chassis
The return to Great Britain for the team was extremely challenging and Vowles himself revealed that Repair work on the chassis destroyed by Albon began at two in the morning on Monday. This will allow Williams to regularly arrive with two cars on track at the next round in Suzuka.
“Work on the repairs could begin as early as 2 am on Monday – explained Vowles in a video published on the official Williams social channels – it was not a 'reflection' of what had happened, but rather a saying 'this is what we're doing and this is how we do it'. So in Suzuka we will have two cars without too many problems“. However, Vowles admitted that the accident suffered in Australia and the subsequent repairs meant that the team will not yet have a spare chassis available for the race in Japan. A situation that will inevitably once again put great pressure on the entire team and the riders.
Updates coming soon
The good news, however, is represented by thearrival of small upgrades to the FW46: “The updates we have planned for Japan will continue to be made. This is the positive news. It's about small interventionsbut each of them will help improve performance – declared Vowles – there may be some downstream elements that will be slightly impacted, but at the moment the team is doing a great job of absorbing the additional workload. So there will be further innovations that we will bring around the sixth round – Miami – or so, and also other elements later on”.
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