Williams is tackling Formula 1 with Microsoft Excel, so no surprise Alexander Albon crashed out of the Japanese Grand Prix on Lap 1 while Logan Sargeant made a mistake 13 laps before the end, finishing last. What's going on?
This is how the Japanese Grand Prix turned out for Williams, who for the 7th time in a row were left without any points. In addition, over the previous two rounds, the drivers had a total of three crashes, a lot for a team without a spare chassis. Expensive!
For the second year in a row, Albon had problems in Japan already on the starting lap - while the cases themselves were quite similar. Last year, Alex was attacked by Bottas even before the initial turn, who was trying to dodge Ocon.
This time, the Williams representative again turned out to be an innocent victim, although now Ricciardo drove into him, and he was dodging Stroll. If you like to bet on Formula 1, we recommend switching to
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Regarding Logan Sargeant, his shenanigans the American again did himself no favours. “Degner” is a dangerous place, the young American locked the wheel for a moment, and before the knew it he was in the gravel.
Williams began the season without a spare F1 chassis which is now biting them hard
Sargeant managed to stop the car to avoid hitting the barriers, returning to the race after the incident cost him about 30 seconds. As a result, both Alpine drivers raced past, with Logan finishing last.
However, in practice two days before the race, Sargeant again crashed the car. Note that Logan’s car is a rebuilt chassis from Albon, which he crashed in Melbourne. The car was repaired in Grove and given to Sargeant, who again stuck it in the wall.
The driver said that he overdid it, making a very wide attack on the seventh turn, and did not expect that he would touch the curb. Still, together with the reversal in training in Australia, this is already his third big and costly mistake.
As a result of this incident, the monocoque was not damaged, although Sargeant destroyed valuable updates - the team built one set of front and rear wings. The saga did not affect the team as hard as Albon’s accident in Melbourne, but along with the money on developing new updates, the engineers spent valuable time sorting out the broken cars.
Heading to Shanghai, a Sprint Race weekend, there will be only one free practice session before things get serious, and testing the wings will not be entirely convenient.
First job as F1 team principal off to a bad start for James Vowles
The start of the season turned out to be a failure for Williams no matter how you look at it. The five best teams are far ahead of the competition, and Grove needs to be the best among the laggards in order to at least rarely take points.
Previously, this happened from time to time, although both “Haas” and “Kick-Sauber” progressed in the off-season, “RB” looks decent, but now it’s much more difficult for Albon. In 2024, he was never in Q3 or in the top ten at the end of the race.
At the same time, Grove is innovating internal processes. Vowles reported that last year, after joining Williams, the stable kept track of car components in Microsoft Excel. The new head has started a global restructuring - and even though he has not yet been able to achieve serious progress at Williams. And it could be said the process under his leadership is not going very well.
Organizational upheavals led to the fact that Williams simply did not have time to make a spare chassis before the start of the season - Albon's accident aggravated its production.
Due to constant crashes, the team has less and less time and resources for updates, and this will affect not only this season but also in the future, namely in 2025 the F1 rules will be the same and new chassis should be an evolution of the one this year.
As a result of the reshuffle initiated by James Vowles, what if the team remain backmarkers?
The new owners from Dorilton Capital miraculously brought Williams back to normal after the 2018 disaster - and it is not clear whether they have the patience for another setback.
Right now, in this era of F1, the once-great team Sir Frank Williams (nine F1 Constructors' titles, seven Driver titles) is unrecognizable in its current form from the once mightiest team the sport had witnessed.
Big Question: Will Williams be a great F1 team ever again?