SUZUKA, Japan — Logan Sargeant will race at the Japanese Grand Prix with the repaired chassis his Williams teammate Alex Albon broke two weeks ago.

Sargeant missed the Australian Grand Prix when Williams effectively gave his car to Albon for the weekend, who had damaged his own in a crash during practice.

Editor’s Picks

Williams currently has a shortage of spare parts and will be without a back-up again for Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix.

Asked which chassis he would race with at Suzuka, Sargeant said: “It’s the repaired one just because the workload to switch the cars back over would be far too much for the mechanics.

“But the chassis repair went better than expected, so it should be perfectly normal as far as I’m aware.”

Suzuka’s circuit is narrow with high-speed corners, and with no spare this weekend a similar scenario is possible again, should one of them crash in a session prior to the race.

Sargeant added: “It’s been a busy winter for the team, a very stressed one for sure trying to get everything together with the amount changing. So it’s definitely not easy for anyone, but I guess it’s a direction that needs to be taken at one point or another, and going forward the structure will just keep improving and hopefully at a certain point not be in a similar position.”

Sargeant said the team believes the repair job has made it 100 grams heavier, which might account to around 0.003s a lap.

Williams justified the decision by saying Albon was more likely to score points than Sargeant, which is backed up by the statistics — Albon has out-scored the American 27-1 since they became teammates at the start of last year.

Albon finished 11th in Melbourne, one position shy of a point.

“I understand the statistics behind it, but at the same time of course I wanted to drive,” Sargeant said. “I was just feeling like I had a good Friday. I just really wanted to build on that and felt like I was in a good place. I feel like I’ve been in a good place since the start of the year to be honest, so I’m quite comfortable with where I’m at.

“Once I left Melbourne I didn’t really think about it, I just got out for a week, tried to stay in my own little world away from racing and I feel as good as ever coming back here.”

Asked how his conversation with team boss James Vowles went, he said: “I think he doesn’t want to see that position for me or Alex to ever be in, and of course wants to always have two cars driving.

“We had a natural conversation about it, he explained his decision and I understood, and as a team we moved on and tried to maximise the result we could with one car.”

Sargeant also said his approach to the punishing Suzuka circuit would not change despite knowing the team does not have spare parts again.

“I don’t think so. Again it’s a situation that we had to deal with through the first three races.

“We went to Saudi with the same situation and of course it’s one of those things that you know you have to be careful, but at the same time, you can’t be. It’s Formula One, if you’re careful, you’re nowhere. So it’s really not even a question.

“You have to be committed, confident and hope nothing goes wrong!”