James Vowles has praise for the efforts put in by Williams in the course of F1 2024, but admits the crashes were a distraction to 2025 but not 2026 as much.
In the end, Williams suffered 17 crashes throughout the 2024 F1 season where all three drivers – Alexander Albon, Logan Sargeant and Franco Colapinto – were the culprit. That derailed their development programme which was already strained due to overweight situation.
The start of the year, they had to put in extra hours to prepare the spare chassis, while also fixing the overweight problem. While they were on it, the crashes kept mounting up. To their luck, it didn’t even stop until the final stages, where they had to put older parts to get the car on the grid.
It has certainly put a dent on their 2025 programme, if not 2026 as much. Team boss Vowles agrees it is not good with cost cap as well, but such moments is helping them to prepare for long-term gains. That is what Albon hinted upon too, who is looking at the long-term picture that Williams has.
“I think teams aren’t built to take, what is it, six major crashes,” said Vowles. “Generally speaking, we’ll hold a stock of parts that’s about four, maybe five of each component. That’s about where you want to be. And so it doesn’t take long to figure out that once you crash five or six of them, you’re in trouble. Huge effort by both the trackside team and those in the factory.
“I’ve had people that are part-time or even on shift work just asking what more can they do to come in and do it. And that’s an incredible feeling when you’re part of an organisation that goes above and beyond to make sure we have two racing cars on the grid every week. It’s a distraction away from ‘25, there’s no doubt about it.
“Not so much from ‘26, but you have to pull your effort into just making sure you’re here on track fighting with your competitors around you. You’re effectively just moving elements around from what you can do. No one here would have accounted, I hope anyway, for this amount of attrition this late on in the season. So the implication is you have to take a little bit away from next year’s cost cap.
“That’s the frustration behind it. You’re moving things around. But to a certain extent as well… What’s the implication? We have elements that we’re fixing for the long term, which is around process structure, infrastructure. It doesn’t hinder any of those. And those are the big gains. What we’re talking about is a few hundreds of thousands that I wish we weren’t spending this year that we could spend next year,” summed up Vowles.
Here’s Alexander Albon on if Williams did like Aston Martin
Here’s Alexander Albon on transparent James Vowles
Here’s Franco Colapinto, Alexander Albon on the stint
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