Williams left sweating on spares after ‘brutal’ F1 crash streak

James Vowles has admitted Williams are facing a shortage of spares after a “brutal” run of crashes over the last two F1 weekends.

Alex Albon had two crashes over the Mexico City Grand Prix weekend, while he had another big shunt in qualifying for the Sao Paulo Grand Prix. Teammate Franco Colapinto crashed in both the wet qualifying and race in Brazil.

The recent streak of crashes have left Williams with a big repair bill and low on spare parts, which team principal Vowles conceded could have a knock-on impact at next weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.

“There’s no team on the grid that can cope with five major accidents in two race weekends,” Vowles said.

“Simply, the amount of spares we carry are not sufficient to carry that amount of attrition. [Las] 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.

“We’re going to do our absolute utmost to get two cars to the best specification that they can be, with sufficient spares around to make that happen.

“What that looks like is difficult to predict at the moment, we’re still getting the items back from Brazil and determining what we have to do in terms of construct, build, in order to get ourselves in the best place possible.”

Vowles described the weekend in Brail as “probably the most brutal that I can remember across my entire career.”

"In the space of seven days, a little more than, we had five major accidents. That's an amount that near enough no one can sustain on the grid,” he explained.

“This team is going through the process of rebuilding itself into a state where it can win races in the future. That doesn't happen overnight.

“It doesn't happen without significant change throughout an organisation, and this one race is simply just a blip in what is a grand scheme of a multi-year programme. It doesn't mean it hurts any less. It's something that hurts tremendously as I'm talking to you now.

“But I want us to be successful and performant. I came here not to be fighting for the odd point, but rather fighting for wins and more in the future. And that can't be achieved without some level of compromise along the way, without rebuilding an organisation.

“So yes, it's painful what happened last weekend, but it hasn't changed what our destination is.

"In fact, it's rooted me even further more to the fact of what we have to do to achieve it is significant, but we can achieve it together as a team.”