Williams boss still has faith in sidelined Sargeant

MELBOURNE, Australia — Williams team principal James Vowles insists he still has faith in Logan Sargeant despite his decision to sideline the American driver at this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix.

Sargeant’s car will be raced by his teammate Alex Albon in Melbourne after Albon damaged his own chassis beyond repair in an accident in Friday practice.

A change in the team’s chassis-building process over the winter meant Williams arrived at the opening three rounds of the 2024 season without a spare this year.

On Friday evening, Vowles made the decision to give the sole remaining chassis to Albon for the rest of the weekend based his belief that the Thai driver will have a better chance of scoring Williams’ first points of the season on Sunday.

Asked if the controversial decision was proof he did not have faith in Sargeant’s ability, Vowles said: “I don’t think that’s the case. The fact I re-signed him [for 2024] shows you I have faith in him.

“This year I think you’ve seen he’s 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 ten positions and there’s no points apart from if you’re 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.

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

“So I’ve reset everything. Taken a view from Bahrain, taken a view from Saudi and taken a view from here which of the two drivers was more likely to score a point.”

Vowles said he had been impressed with the way Sargeant took the news.

“First and foremost it’s a very difficult decision,” he said. “You have an elite athlete who is doing nothing but what I’ve asked him to do this year. He hasn’t made a single mistake, he didn’t put a foot wrong across this year and yet I’ve taken him out of the car.

“Whether it was you in the car or him in the car, that would damage your confidence. One of the methods I’ve been putting in place with him so far is structure around it, including he and I talking about where his strengths are and where his weaknesses are. Help and support in terms of his surroundings in order to move him forward.

“The truth behind it is with a racing driver, when they get in the car… again, for him now will be in Japan, and he ends up within milliseconds of Alex which is what he’s been doing the last few races, you’ll see the confidence flows back anyway.

“The second message is this, he understands it’s a team sport — it’s the weirdest sport in the world where I’ve got two drivers, but it’s a team sport. And he understands that.

“One of the reflections I had is I was nowhere had his maturity when I was his age. It came out in his commentary and you’ll see it when you ask him questions today, he’s frustrated by it because he wants to be performing at the highest level. But equally he understands and recognises that it’s a team sport and I’ve had to make one of the hardest decisions so far in my position here.”

It is rare for teams to travel to races without a spare chassis in modern F1, but Vowles said overdue improvements to the team’s processes resulted in delays in producing a spare over the winter.

“I think one of the things were transparent about [at the first race] in Bahrain is that we were very late with these cars — very, very late,” he said. “We pushed everything to the absolute limit. The fallout of that is we didn’t have a spare chassis.

“Now even then it was intended to be coming here at round three, but it got delayed and delayed again as other items got pushed back as a result.”

The damaged chassis is due to arrive back at the team’s factory in the United Kingdom in the early hours of Monday morning with the aim of repairing it in time for the next race in Japan in two weeks’ time.

Vowles said the damage was too extensive to repair on site in Australia, but believes it is salvageable for Japan.

“Yesterday the gearbox was cracked in two, the engine mounts were completely bent and the engine’s done fundamentally,” he added. “The chassis on the front-right corner, where the suspension goes in, is torn apart — that’s the best way to describe it. I can put my finger into the chassis — which you shouldn’t be able to do, just for clarity.

“The team here have been able to get the car back [to the U.K.] for about Monday, 2 a.m. So we have teams already working on it for Monday onwards in order to get it repaired.

“Until they see it in person it will be very difficult, they’re doing things by photo that we’ve done here, but there’s four or five mitigation plans in place for it.”