A year ago Williams was perhaps the biggest surprise of the Formula 1 season. After finishing at the back of the grid in 2022, the team stormed up the Constructors’ Championship standings to finish seventh, powered by a strong season from Alexander Albon and the new leadership offered by incoming Team Principal James Vowles.
One of their better qualifying weekends of the year came at the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix. The long straights offered by the Las Vegas street circuit were fertile ground for their 2023 challenger, the FW45. Both Albon and 2023 rookie Logan Sargeant stormed into Q3, and while they could not duplicate that performance in the race itself, it showed that the team was back on the map.
Now as the grid readies for a return to the Vegas Strip, there are growing concerns over whether Williams will be able to field both drivers next week.
Over the past few race weekends, the team has endured several hard crashes, incidents that Vowles has conceded pose a challenge to the team fielding both cars in Las Vegas. On Sunday at the São Paulo Grand Prix, for example, both Albon and Franco Colapinto endured hard crashes in qualifying, and Albon’s shunt in Q3 kept him out of the race itself.
While the team was able to turn Colapinto’s FW46 around in time for him to make the start of the São Paulo Grand Prix, he crashed again in the race, and now the team is hoping they have enough parts to make the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
“There is no team on the grid that can cope with five major accidents in two race weekends,” said Vowles in a segment on the team’s official app. “Simply the matter of spares we carry are not sufficient to carry that amount of attrition.
“Vegas, I have high hopes for. We were fast there last year and I am confident the car will work well in those conditions. So we will do our absolute utmost to get two cars to the best specification they can be, with sufficient spares around us to make that happen,” added Vowles.
“What that looks like is difficult to predict. We are still getting the items back from Brazil and determining what we have to do in terms of construct and build in order to give ourselves the best possible scenario.”
Were Williams unable to field both cars in Las Vegas, it would not be the first time this season they started a Grand Prix with just one driver on the grid. At the Australian Grand Prix earlier this season, Albon suffered another hard crash in practice, and the team lacked a spare chassis at that point in the schedule.
As a result, Vowles made the “unacceptable” decision to bench Sargeant and slide Albon into Sargeant’s car for the rest of the weekend as the team only had one operational FW46.
Time will tell if Williams faces a similar decision next week.
