The chassis got damaged on the front-right side when Albon crashed into the tire wall after hitting Daniel Ricciardo’s RB.
The team doesn’t have a spare chassis until the Miami GP. They believe they can fix it and send it to Shanghai for the Chinese GP.
This is the third big crash the team had in two weeks. In Australia, Albon crashed in practice and had to use his teammate Logan Sargeant’s chassis for the race.
In Suzuka, it was Sargeant’s turn to crash in practice. While his chassis was okay, there was other expensive damage, like a cracked gearbox, that would take up a lot of time and resources to fix.
The team principal, James Vowles, said they won’t have a spare chassis in China. He explained that it takes a long time to build a new chassis, about 8-10 weeks.
Albon said he was worried about the crash in Suzuka and knew it was bad for the team.
Nobody got punished for the crash, as the stewards thought it was just a typical first-lap incident.
