Due to delays in making new cars during the winter, the team didn’t have a third car ready for drivers Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant at the start of the 2024 season.
At the Australian Grand Prix, Alex Albon crashed during practice, and his car couldn’t be fixed for the rest of the weekend. So, the team had to use Logan Sargeant’s car instead.
The team had more crashes in the following races, which made it hard to finish building the new car. But now, team principal James Vowles says they finally finished making the third car.
He said at an event in Miami, “Despite all those big crashes we’ve had at the beginning of the year, the third car is all here and it’s ready to go as well. I hope it stays in a box for the next 18 races!”
Even though Williams improved its FW46 car this year, they haven’t scored any points yet because the competition is tough.
Vowles thinks the team hasn’t shown its full potential yet because of the crashes. He said, “There is potential but we haven’t realized any of it at all.”
He explained that the crashes caused a lot of damage to the cars, like losing three floors, three front wings, three rear wings, and three gearboxes, which is usually what happens in a whole year, not just two races.
Now that they have the spare car ready, they can focus on making the car faster with upgrades.
“We didn’t bring performance when we should have brought performance, we were just trying to bring the stock back up,” Vowles said. “The start of the season was not where we wanted it to be. But everything gets reset and we move forward from now.”
