The Williams F1 team has announced that it is assessing its spare parts situation for the next round at Las Vegas after a disaster Sao Paulo Grand Prixwhere Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto suffered heavy falls. However, the problems actually stem from Mexico, where Albon suffered a huge crash.

If Albon’s major crash in FP1 wasn’t bad enough, his Mexico Grand Prix came to an abrupt end following a collision with VCARB’s Yuki Tsunoda. The following weekend at Interlagos proved no better, with Albon suffering a heavy crash in qualifying. With qualifying postponed until Sunday due to bad weather, his team was faced with the impossible task of repairing the FW46 F1 car in time for the Grand Prix.

Although Colapinto managed to start Sunday’s race, which saw numerous yellow flags, he crashed midway, causing significant damage to his car. The incident brought out red flags and the race eventually resumed.

Fortunately, the drivers remained unscathed after the two intense weekends, but Williams team principal James Vowles revealed that amid a shortage of spare parts, the team scrambled to get the cars back into their best shape for racing on the Las Vegas Strip. Speaking in his post-race update on the Williams app, Vowles was asked about the current spare parts situation. He said:

“No team on the grid can cope with five major accidents in two race weekends. Just having spare parts that we carry is not enough to support such attrition.

“I have high hopes for Vegas. We were fast there last year and I’m confident the car will perform well in these conditions.”

“So we will do everything we can to get two cars to the best possible specification, with enough spare parts around us to make that happen.”

“It’s hard to predict what that will look like. We’re still picking up the pieces from Brazil and figuring out what we need to do in terms of building and construction to give ourselves the best possible scenario.”

Vowles stressed that although the Brazilian GP was just a race weekend, it was “brutal” enough to cause huge damage to a team undergoing transformation across the board. He explained:

“The weekend in Brazil was probably the most brutal I can remember in my entire career. In the space of seven days, a little over, we had five major accidents. In Brazil alone between qualifying and the third race.

“It’s an amount that no one on the network can afford.

“This team is rebuilding itself to a state where it can win races in the future. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

“This doesn’t happen without significant change within the organization, and this race is just one blip in what is the grand scheme of a multi-year program.

“That doesn’t mean it hurts any less. It’s something that hurts immensely as I speak to you now.

“But I want us to succeed and perform well. I came here not to fight for the odd point, but rather to fight for wins and more in the future. And that cannot be achieved without some level of compromise along the way,” without rebuilding an organization.

“So yes, what happened last weekend is painful, but it hasn’t changed where we’re going. In fact, it’s made me even more grounded in what we need to do to get there. is important, but we can do it together, as a team.”