Sargeant’s crash came at “the worst time” for Williams after upgrade

Williams team principal James Vowles said Logan Sargeant’s huge crash in final practice came at the worst possible time for the team.

The crash occured 14 minutes into the final hour of practice. Sargeant lost control of his car when he drove onto the grass at the exit of turn three and spun into a barrier.

Williams introduced its first major new upgrade of the season this weekend on both cars. While Sargeant was uninjured in the crash, it caused huge damage to his car. After the FW46 came to a stop a fire broke out at the rear, which marshals extinguished.

Vowles said the timing of Sargeant’s crash was especially unfortunate given the team’s limited supply of new parts.

“There’s hundreds of hours spent on the update, it looks like it’s working, but there’s few of them in the world,” he told Sky. “Really, the worst time is when you’ve just introduced it with small amounts of bits and put it into the wall at the circuit.”

The crash puts Sargeant’s participation in qualifying in serious doubt. It also leaves Williams facing the question of whether to replace his damaged parts with new specification pieces, or refit older hardware.

Vowles indicated the team will consider switching Sargeant’s car to older specification parts, so they will have spares available if they are needed on Alexander Albon’s car.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

“There’s a limited amount,” Vowles explained, “so if something happens now to the other car, you need to make sure in parc ferme you have enough spares. That’s more what I want to evaluate now, when we’re under parc ferme conditions, can we service both cars to a sufficient standard.”

The extent of the damage to Sargeant’s car “looks pretty serious,” Vowles admitted. “I think that could result in a chassis change. So let’s keep an eye on what that looks like.”

Prior to this weekend’s race Williams confirmed Sargeant will not remain with the team next year as he is replaced by Carlos Sainz Jnr. Yesterday Vowles said Sargeant had shown great inner strength while his place at the team was in doubt earlier in the year.

“One of the strengths that’s underrated in his regard is he has a huge mental resilience,” said Vowles. “He takes punishment in the media, in the world, really, almost weekend-on-weekend.

“But when it comes the following weekend, he’s cleared his mind of that. And he’s here just to perform, fundamentally, and he builds up…