Sargeant big crash to challenge Williams spares box. Maybe DNS?

No surprise, Sargeant will not be on the F1 grid next year. That he is on it this year was always a no-win call by Williams Team Principal James Vowles to keep the American as teammate to Alex Albon. It was an ill-advised belief. But they were warned and now contemplate the substantial damage caused to their second car. Yet again.

Although conditions were very tricky at a damp Zandvoort, this is F1 where there is nowhere to hide in weather that tends to separate the Big Boys from the little' ones.

Replays show Sargeant getting the right front on the wet grass exiting Turn 3 losing control through Turn 4 and Turn 5 before slamming the barriers hard. The smouldering Williams came to rest mid-track, catching fire as its lucky driver jumped out unhurt.

"I'm okay," the driver reported. The 23-year-old, who has yet to score a point this year and has already lost his seat for 2025, was taken to the medical centre for precautionary checks Reuters reported.

Immediately after the nasty crash, Vowles told Sky F1: "There's no good time [to crash]. Hundreds of hours are spent on making things. The worst time is when you have just introduced some bits and you put them into the wall. The difficulty there is it's FP3. Qualifying will be upon us pretty quickly, but the car is in a pretty bad state."

Regarding spares to rebuild Sargeant's damaged Williams, Vowles admitted: "Yes. But there's a limited amount, so if something happens to the other car, you need to make sure in parc ferme that you have spares. That's what I want to understand now. Can we service both cars?

"The first step of it is we will go through in detail what's been damaged. It looks pretty serious, and that could result in a chassis change," explained the Williams team boss, who expects a chassis change for Sargeant.

Conditions tricked several drivers, Nico Hulkenberg has planted his Haas in wrong places no less than five times this weekend so far. He nosed a barrier, after a trip through a sand trap shortly before Sargeant brokes his toy.

Sky F1 expert Martin Brundle gave his take on the Sargeant shunt: "He’s got a little bit wide in Turn 3 climbing up the hill, as they tend to do, using the kerb. But he’s sort of stuck with it and then got on the grass and kept his foot in and lost it at the top of the hill.

"And then hits a sort of reveal for a service road which really did make the impact much worse than you would normally have from sliding down the barrier. It was a massive impact, front and rear, and 75 per cent of the car at least will be unusable," reckoned Brundle.

Damage to the car was later assessed, with the team reporting on X: "We are assessing the chassis but it currently looks okay. We will aim to repair and build up the chassis to be ready for Qualifying, however with the amount of work to be completed it will be difficult, but we’ll give it everything."

Sargeant did not contest Qualifying. The Williams of Sargeanr was not repaired in time for Q1.