Williams counting ‘brutal’ cost of five major accidents in 10 days

James Vowles believes no Formula 1 team could sustain the pain of “five major accidents” in just 10 days, as occurred with Williams over the recent Mexico City and São Paulo Grand Prix weekends.

Williams’ tale of woe began in Friday’s first practice session at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez where Alex Albon ran into Ollie Bearman’s Ferrari, with the 19-year-old Briton standing in for Charles Leclerc.

Forty-eight hours later, Albon was again involved, on this occasion at the start of the race with RB’s Yuki Tsunoda, who smashed into a wall after the duo had twice banged wheels on the long run to Turn 1.

A week on, and Williams endured arguably one of the worst days in its history in terms of crash damage, as Albon and team-mate Franco Colapinto both crashed in a qualifying session held on Sunday morning at a rain-soaked Interlagos. Albon could not race as the team was unable to repair his car in time.

In the grand prix, Colapinto crashed again, sparking a crucial red-flag period that played a part in determining the race result.

“The Brazilian weekend was probably the most brutal that I can remember across my entire career,” said Vowles, speaking on his post-race debrief, the ‘Vowles Verdict’ on the Williams website.

“In the space of seven days, a little bit more than that, we had five major accidents. In Brazil alone, between qualifying and the race, three. That’s an amount that, near enough, no one can sustain on the grid, and it hurts as a result of it.”

Williams assessing spare parts for Las Vegas

It leaves Williams counting the cost, estimated to run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds, and piecing together cars for the next race in Las Vegas that spearheads the season-concluding triple-header, with grands prix to follow in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

“The amount of spares we carry are not sufficient to carry that amount of attrition,” said Vowles.

“Vegas, I have high hopes for. We were fast there last year, and I’m confident we have a car that can work well in those conditions.

“So we are going to do our absolute utmost to get two cars to the best specification they can be with sufficient spares around us to make that happen. What that looks like is difficult to predict.

“We’re still getting the items back from Brazil and determining what we have to do in terms of construct in order to get ourselves in the best place possible.”