Williams team principal James Vowles says he has never experienced anything like the spate of crashes his team has endured this year.
The team have endured more incidents resulting in significant damage to their cars than any other team in 2024.Williams ran low on spare parts early in the season after a series of crashes. Now the team has endured five major accidents in the last three rounds in Mexico, Brazil and Las Vegas.
As a result of the frequent damage to their cars, driver Franco Colapinto is using an old specification of suspension on his FW46 this weekend in Qatar.
Vowles, who joined Williams from Mercedes at the beginning of last year, admitted he had never experienced such a run of misfortune for a team in his time in F1 and that the frequency of accidents is affecting their performance.
“We’re trying to contain it as much as possible to this year so that we’re not hurting next year’s programme,” Vowles told Sky. “But when you’re at those sorts of numbers – 15 officially – what it means is you’re not focusing on adding performance and focusing on the future, you’re just redeveloping status quo. And that’s frustrating.
“In 25 years of doing this, I can’t remember anything anywhere near as bad. It is difficult, it really has been.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Vowles arrived at Williams at the beginning of 2023 and has started major restructuring of the team’s racing operations. Despite the setbacks, he insists that the team’s evolution will not be affected.
“Most of [the accidents] have been towards the back end of the season,” he explained. “So at that point you’re trying to more focus on the following year.
“It hasn’t slowed down the transformation we’re doing internally. We’ve already carved out enough resource to make sure we’ll focus on ’26 development. That’s within error, that doesn’t have an impact. For ’25, redeveloping how we do process and structure within all of our operations, those are being carved out and segmented so that we can still transform.
“What it has done is, there’s an amount of cost cap we’ve had to allocate to this year, which is frustrating – I wish it was into the future. And there’s an amount of diversion away from just focusing on getting things better, which for sure we’ve taken attention away from.”
Williams’ 15 incidents in 2024
| Round | Driver | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| Australian Grand Prix | Alexander Albon | Crashed heavily at turn seven in practice |
| Japanese Grand Prix | Logan Sargeant | Crashed in practice at Dunlop |
| Japanese Grand Prix | Alexander Albon | First lap accident with Daniel Ricciardo |
| Miami Grand Prix | Logan Sargeant | Hit out of grand prix by Kevin Magnussen |
| Canadian Grand Prix | Logan Sargeant | Spun out of wet grand prix and hit wall |
| Canadian Grand Prix | Alexander Albon | Innocent victim of Sainz spinning in front during race |
| Dutch Grand Prix | Logan Sargeant | Crashed heavily in wet practice session |
| Azerbaijan Grand Prix | Franco Colapinto | Crashed into wall in first practice |
| United States Grand Prix | Alexander Albon | First corner clash with Esteban Ocon |
| Mexican Grand Prix | Alexander Albon | Crashed into Oliver Bearman in practice |
| Mexican Grand Prix | Alexander Albon | Retired after contact with Yuki Tsunoda at start |
| Brazilian Grand Prix | Franco Colapinto | Crashed out of Q2 at turn three |
| Brazilian Grand Prix | Alexander Albon | Crashed out of Q3 and was unable to start grand prix |
| Brazilian Grand Prix | Franco Colapinto | Crashed out of the grand prix under Safety Car |
| Las Vegas Grand Prix | Franco Colapinto | Crashed out of Q2 at turn 16 |
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories - and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
2024 Qatar Grand Prix
- Horner ‘believes 100%’ Verstappen did not threaten to crash into Russell
- Russell and Verstappen cast new light on clash which triggered explosive row
- Hamilton’s puncture not caused by mirror debris – Mercedes
- Another start-to-finish win shows Qatar GP could be F1’s most processional race
- “Am I dead last now?” Unheard radio from Hamilton’s disastrous Qatar GP
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
29th November 2024, 16:23
Maybe the car is just tricky as hell to drive quickly?
Red Andy (@red-andy)
29th November 2024, 17:35
25 years takes us back to the turn of the century, right at the end of the era of disastrous pay drivers. I’m sure many of the shoestring teams of the early and mid 1990s suffered comparable repair bills (inflation adjusted of course).
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
29th November 2024, 19:01
Maybe the simulator needs to be adjusted so the drivers train to drive slightly more conservatively. Of course, that would probably result in them being less aggressive in their driving style, which might result in them earning less points.
fawkes
30th November 2024, 0:13
Really James? If memory serves me right back in the day crashes actually happened more than nowadays
Nitzo (@webtel)
30th November 2024, 7:00
Were there so many crashes when Latifi was driving ?
If not, then Sargeant was a downgrade from Latifi. Right now, seems they do have a better driver in Colapinto.