Vowles explains sidelining Sargeant

Williams Team Principal James Vowles has provided some further explanation around the call to bench Logan Sargeant to ensure Alex Albon can carry on racing in Australia.

For the second season in a row, Albon came unstuck at the fast turn 6-8 complex and the significant damage to his FW46 has meant the chassis was deemed unfit to return this weekend.

Vowles said “the gearbox was cracked in two, the engine mounts were completely bent, the engine’s done and the chassis on the front right corner where the suspension goes in is torn apart.”

But due to Williams not having a spare chassis available, it has instead sidelined Sargeant to ensure its lead driver can carry on.

Whilst it has been harsh for the American, who has described it as the “hardest moment I can remember” many believe it was a call that had to be made given Albon is Williams’ most competitive chance of scoring points and it is far from the first time it has happened in F1.

Despite the clear preference to have Albon, when asked if the team still has faith in Sargeant, Vowles made it clear he does.

“No, I don’t think that is the case. The fact I resigned him shows you I have faith in him,” Vowles said. 

“This year, I think you have seen he has been closer to Alex than before. 

“However, I have one car and just one car. There are five very fast teams taking up those top 10 positions and there’s no points apart from if you are in the top 10. 

“There’s one point separating the bottom five teams at the moment and so every point will make a difference between now and the end of the year. 

“And in that regard, you therefore put your money on the driver that so far this year has been slightly ahead of the other one, which is Alex.

“So I have reset everything, taken a view from Bahrain, taken a view from Saudi and taken the view from here, which of the two drivers is most likely to score a point.”

Despite the drama Vowles also revealed a spare chassis is not expected to be available until China in two races time.

“When I started in February last year, the plan was to have three chassis at round one,” he said.

“We went through large changes in organisation, having performance and technology changes in the back end and process. 

“We started to push out, fundamentally, certain elements of things. There’s a finite amount of resource and as we were going through an inefficient structure and making transformation at the same time, we started to cause problems and those problems before could have translated to adding metal components or last year’s rear wings. In this particular case, the third chassis started to get delayed and delayed and delayed.

“We were very late with these cars, very, very late. We pushed everything to the absolute limit and the fallout of that is, we didn’t have a spare chassis.

“Definitely we will have two chassis in Japan, but no I don’t think that third chassis because of the workload that we now have.

“I think it will be ready in China.”

Image: Peter Norton EPIC Sports Photography

2024 Australian Grand Prix schedule (AEDT)

Friday, March 22

Practice 1: 1: L. Norris 2: M. Verstappen 3: G. Russell

Practice 2: 1: C. Leclerc 2: M. Verstappen 3: C. Sainz

Saturday, March 23

Practice 3: 12.30-13.30

Qualifying: 16.00-17.00

Sunday, March 24

Grand Prix: 15.00

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