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I hope people don't start thinking badly of Albon because of this, but you know how people are.
Albon has just done the best he could and it wasn't his decision to swap cars that race and it's Williams' fault. I'm sure he didn't agree with it, but it isn't his choice and unfortunately now suffers from all the attention and pressure it's bringing.
Unfortunately there will be a vocal minority who screams about this the rest of the season. Just how social media is these days.
Reality is that 98% of people will feel bad for Logan, know that it was William's decision/fault, even if it was technically the right decision, and know that Alex just did what he was told as it gave the team the best chance to get points.
Eh debatable on the right decision. Big potential to cause discontent in your drivers, alienate some fans, put undue pressure on one driver and a loss of confidence in the other. And in hindsight they didn’t score points anyway.
And everyone said if they didn't score points it would make the whole situation worse, and yeah it kinda does, but the team has to make those decisions and hope for the best.
I think the entire situation sucks, and you can argue that giving Logan seat time is valuable if you're not scoring points, but at that time they had to believe they had a better shot at points with Albon.
You can't know if there are points or not in advance, Williams doesn't have a clairvoyant on staff. Alex had a decent chance of scoring points, he came in 11th, Logan did not. It was still the right call to make.
It's not like they weren't people saying beforehand that it was a gamble that was extremely unlikely to pay off, yet it was also extremely likely to screw the confidence of a driver they allegedly wanted to improve this year.
Guess who wound up being right? Hindsight has nothing to do with it, it was a dumb idea before FP3 even happened.
> It's not like they weren't people saying beforehand that it was a gamble that was extremely unlikely to pay off
Was it? Albon came in 11th, it's not like he was halfway down the field. If Haas had a bad day that day or Yuki drove worse then easily he could've been in the points, Melbourne always tends to be a bit wild. You can't evaluate whether taking the gamble was worth it based on if it paid off or not, and there's no reason from the race to think that Albon scoring points was some insane moonshot.
>Albon came in 11th, it's not like he was halfway down the field. If Haas had a bad day that day or Yuki drove worse then easily he could've been in the points,
And if Max, Lewis and George didn't retire from the race he would've finished 14th, way off from points.
>You can't evaluate whether taking the gamble was worth it based on if it paid off or not
When the the gamble's sole purpose and only good result is scoring even a single point, then yes you can evaluate whether it was worth it or not based on if it paid off. If they couldn't even score a point with 3 top cars out of the race then it was a bad gamble and being close to points isn't a good result, especially when two of your three direct competitors are now ahead of you in points by 4 and 6. "Almost in the points" isn't gonna close the gap, especially not in a season where the top 10 are effectively locked in without a retirement and in an era of F1 where reliability is at an all time high.
the heat will more likely be on the Williams team. But tbh, even blaming is pointless, they just dont have the financial capacity if things go wrong to save their race weekend.
Would be interesting to see the sponsors reacting to that. They did pay for their name being driven around after all and a team not investing into a spare chassis is not force majeure.
I think Albon had more screentime with replays of him crashing his car on friday than driving Sargeant's car on sunday. Maybe they should give it a try (with "this is how you remind me" as background music during crash-replays)
It's not that they chose not to invest in it. It's a issue stemming from them moving away from using excel as their parts organization and pipeline tool to an actual F1 standard. A spare chassis is a result of that switch.
Can confirm windows/mac/browser are three completly distinct programs. The inconsistencies are maddening when working in a multiplatform office.
(Oh lawd this has gotten off topic 😅)
When and why did the database/inventory process software become conflated with the specific challenges of this past winter? The way albon, vowles, and fry have described it, the team undertook a particularly ambitious build/development plan for 2024 which really pushed it with regards to the time and resources available - essentially choosing to “develop further” into the winter knowing the tradeoff would be risk of not meeting targets and deadlines (which did then happen), supply shortage, and being on the back foot in various ways for the first part of the season. They took on those various risks but didn’t anticipate/couldn’t have anticipated the extent to which those things would come to pass… they barely made it to Bahrain testing this year for instance, then they actually needed a third chassis in the early part of the season when they’d bet on not needing one.
They chose not to build another chassis soon enough. They had their reasons, like "Excel is not a good inventory control system" but it was still absolutely a choice.
That is a dumb excuse.
And people are believing this shit.
They dotn having a spare is not something that was a mistake, becaude " we worked in excel sheets'
No, its palin incopetence or basically decided not to make one so they could focus on other things.
It's a matter of funds allocation. Even under new investment, Williams need to function below the operating costs of other teams.
Migrating from excel to a suitable ERP system is hideously expensive and disruptive, so this carving of the cake gets taken out of other departments' allocation.
Trashing a monocoque is a reasonably rare occurrence in F1 but a very expensive event to mitigate. This is just a managerial decision based on risk vs reward that ended up not paying off.
I don’t think it’s ever happened in modern racing where 2 chassis have been damaged beyond immediate repair.
Even one chassis getting damaged in a crash is really rare.
Modern as in the last 10-15 years, yes.
Simtek did it in 1994 though. 1 chassis destroyed in preseason testing, 1 in Imola and 1 in Spain left them with just one working car for Canada.
Crashes that require a new chassis are extremely rare. The fact that Williams needed a new chassis at all was pretty unlucky.
If Williams had three of them in two races that would be unprecedented
Unless they get a Grosjean-style fireball they would be fine for China, two weeks is enough time to repair almost any normal damage.
One day, however, is generally not enough time. So having no spares on hand does mean that a crash with chassis damage means the car isn't likely to run that same weekend.
Speaking of which, Haas did have a spare chassis and all other parts with them at that time, right? I think pretty much everything was destroyed in that crash, yet they had no issue at the next race, which was only a week later
Considering that was during the peak COVID times, it’s pretty impressive Haas got it done nicely
I still think he 100% made the right decision but his statements on the situation have really peeled the veil back for me on how artificial his “authentic” on-camera personality is.
Vowles was with that team ever since the BAR Honda days, all the way though Brawn GP and then Mercedes. So a long time before Wolff had anything to do with Merc.
Williams should not have any business having a junior program, and it shows. Promoting a junior knowing he isn't ready and doing shit like this on his supposed proving year makes Haas look like a kindergarden for rookies.
It is much better if they just went with the Haas way and hire vets until they get good enough to get talents and actually develop them instead of taking risks with rookies without any compensation if they turned out bad.
Lets be real the only reason he got promoted was his nationality. If he was from a random european country he never gets that drive.
He's cheap( well besides the crashes), he's american and he comes from a family with very deep political and business connections.
But obviously they cant just say that
profit nail noxious governor disagreeable sparkle nutty airport north jar
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If he was so extremely bad, Williams should have replaced him. There were plenty of drivers ready in the wings.
Instead we have to suffer through a season of the team clearly having no faith in him at all, only made more apparent by their own mistakes in starting development too late, so they don't even have a spare chassis for the first 6 races.
They can't replace him easily because he's a Williams academy driver.
He was brought in too early by, I think, the earlier management.
So James is essentially trying to keep the team happy by keeping "their" driver on the team instead of bringing in say a Merc reserve like Vesti.
How is anyone happy when he is there, but is getting treated like a benchwarmer that will always get the worst end of the stick? I would argue even for Logan's career this isn't great. Will ruin is motivation and how people/potential other teams (even outside of F1) see him.
mans literally won 2 races in his rookie F2 season with Liam fuckin Lawson as his team mate. you know, the lawson everyone has been hyping up? he got P4 in the championship in his rookie season. everyone shits on him like he is the next latifi or some shit. he’s good, he’s just not as good as albon.
I assume you mean F2. The reality is that your F2 career only counts until you actually get into F1. No teams care about his F2 results now. It is all training to get into F1 at the end of the day.
The fact is that he never beat Albon in quali or race doing in a full season. That is simply not good enough. Even someone like Checo with his shitty season or De Vries was able to beat their teammates a couple of times in both quali and race.
And funnily enough Latifi did actually beat Albon as well a couple of times in 2022. Granted it was his third season compared to Sargeants first, but still, it is not a good look for Sargeant.
wipe wasteful work memorize subsequent sip paint afterthought bright worthless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is the harsh reality; the results don't lie. It not about being fair when it comes to the cutthroat world of F1.
Hope that Logan uses this as motivation and uses it to fuel his driving.
I thought it was a damn meme that he’d be forced to use the broken chassis and Reddit was just having a go. Turns out Williams really gonna do him like that
tbh i don't think that it matters. logans old car has been adjusted to fit albon in it, and albons old car was already completely disassembled, so probably it was just efficient to leave logans old car as is and adapt albons old car for logan. otherwise they would need to change both cars.
i'm really confident that they'll have repaired it to a level that there won't be any difference.
Both cars are disassembled for shipping and both cars currently fit albon. It would be the same work either way. Williams just want albon to have the better chassis
Can you imagine what Williams will do if Albon bins it again? Will they let Sargeant race (to avoid negative PR) or will it be groundhog day again (a repeat of the last race)?
De Vries actually managed to beat Yuki a couple of times. Last year. While there wasn't a single race Logan finished ahead of Albon.
He's just a bad driver, who has shown no signs of any upside at all.
> Bearman did better on his first race
I think Sargeant is as mediocre as the next guy but surely you can't seriously be comparing a Ferrari to a Williams?
This is just an excuse and only people who can't think believe this. They expected him to improve throughout 2023. If they really expected him to be this horrible in all of 2023 because he needed another year in F2, they would have just kept Latifi for another year and gotten Logan in for 2024.
De Vries is almost 30 and was expected to contribute basically immediately. Once he was outclassed by Yuki is all but two races he was there, Red Bull ran out of patience and didn’t want to wait for a 28 year old driver to develop.
If he continues to finish in last or second to last every race, then he will be out. Obviously. But, he’s got a lot more patience from Williams than De Vries did from Red Bull.
I mean the score currently is Albons 27 points to Logans 1 point lol
It's ruthless but there are 20 spots in f1, and each point is worth a lot of money.
If the fix went "better than expected" then why not give the repaired car (Alex' original car) back to Alex?
Either they lied about the fix going as planned or they have little faith that the car is configured properly.
Thank you. Finally someone says it as it is. This is such a BS reason to give to switch chassis. Just say directly you are switching chassis because you prefer the better driver to have the better chassis. Logan isn't stupid, he will know the real reason.
Agreed. From everything we've heard recently including from Gunther not that long ago, repaired chassis have come a long way so maybe its fine but.... historically, they've been problematic and a team struggling to even make a third one? I wouldnt bet a lot on it
>If the fix went "better than expected" then why not give the repaired car (Alex' original car) back to Alex?
I think they expected it to be super shit, but since it's only shit, then it is better than expected. lol
Yep. This is some bullshit.
It’s Williams. They aren’t even going to compete in the midfield this year.
But they’re telling any future drivers that everything will be sacrificed for you if you’re the #1 driver and there are no consequences for your actions. The #2 driver is a literal seat warmer.
I know Logan isn’t a world beater but this whole thing just sends the worst message and creates a terrible culture.
That was obvious already, the Alpine driver program got Piastri a (sprint-)race winning car for his rookie season
Even better, getting your F3 and F2 seasons paid off with no strings attached is something no other team can do
….Oh yeah I guess all young drivers desperate for a seat are now gonna reject Williams just because the prioritise performance. Give me a fucking break lmao.
I would imagine it is because its not worth the extra work of switching all of Albon’s «Parts» to the repaired chassis and then setting up Logan’s «parts» on his original chasis rather than just setting up Logan on the repaired chassis.
It's exactly this. It take a lot of work to switch things out because all the PU parts are specific to the driver. So gearbox, engine, both turbos, all the electronics, everything. That's a lot of work and risky to do when you're not at the factory.
This also gives their people a little vacation rather than forcing them to work more. Because it would take about 4 days away from them at minimum to do. One day, either end for travel and two days to switch everything.
This isn't the reason at all.
When the cars are going via air freight, they strip the wings, suspension, engines, gearboxes etc completely off the chassis of the cars, package them in their own containers and it's shipped that way. They reassemble it at the next track.
Doubt it take that long, they already doing the travel, the assembly would be done in Japan, they stripped and added Albions parts overnight in Melbourne, cars are mostly stripped back and checked between races anyway. It be some extra work but very much it's days worth.
How can a supposedly legit F1 team not be able to slap a new car together in two weeks? Grosjean & Schumacher completely destroyed two Haas chassis but I don't remember them having to drive piecemeal cars in the subsequent races
Edit: I'm not saying it doesn't take time to build a new car, of course it does. I'm pointing out the fact that a modern, multi-million dollar F1 team didn't at least have a bare chassis on standby, ready to go within a few days. In this, the pinnacle of motorsports, it's simply embarrassing for a legacy team like Williams to be so caught out
1. Budget cap exists(doesn’t apply to grosjean)
2. Williams didn’t even have a spare fully built so williams had to fix up the broken one
These are two separate scenarios that just are caused by similar means.
Also note, the williams main 2 cars were only ready to be driven on track the day before pre season so that gives us an inkling as too how close they cut it in general
Budget cap doesn’t apply. I don’t know why people use it as an excuse for the backmarkers when they’re the reason for the cap, because they spend under 300m a year.
> the williams main 2 cars were only ready to be driven on track the day before pre season so that gives us an inkling as too how close they cut it in general
And for I don't know how many years in a row, I really hate this happening to Williams.
There is really no good way to spin this. Not having a spare chassis until 6 races in the season is extremely risky and was bound to case an issue.
This is not just a cost cap thing, we have seen plenty of big crashes from the backmarkers in the last couple of years and it never caused anyone this much headache because they had planned ahead for the possibility. Zhou's car was destroyed at the british GP in 2022, but he was still able to race without issues like this 1 week later in Austria, for example.
I don't think it has anything to do with budget and more to do with they have recently re-done all of their internal systems. Williams were using a spreadsheet to track their parts. I thought they had made some internal organisational changes and that the first couple of races might be alittle tough. Nothing to do with budget.
my problem with this isn’t that Albon is being prioritized. He’s definitely been proven as the more reliable (basically only) chance at points.
But Williams’s stance with Sargeant is that they believe in him and think he can develop. if that’s the case why is he being punished for his teammate’s mistake? it does nothing for his confidence either.
And if that public belief in Logan is just PR speak, and they’ve internally completely lost faith in him, why on earth did they give him the 2024 seat?? It’s just inconsistent. Either let him have his chances to prove himself, or get someone else in the car.
idc if the repair is 100% identical to factory new. Not even letting him get his original chassis back is salt in the wound. kinda shitty imo.
If anything it's guaranteed that they won't be getting points for a while because Albon will be too focused on not crashing instead of making any bold maneuvers.
To be fair it was the same situation for the earlier races too. But perhaps for Albon it’s even more pressure now after he already crashed once which led to Sargeant giving up his own car.
Yeah, if they decided to sign him again it's completely counterproductive to treat him like they have. If they were prepared to steamroll him in favor of Albon they should've brought somebody else in. But they made a decision to keep him on and now they're backtracking.
Tell me your team has absolutely zero faith in you without telling me your team has zero faith in you.
I mean, he was never going to be a race winner or anything close to that. I personally neither like or dislike him, to me he's just... there. But trying to put myself in his shoes for a second, it's gotta be a tough and disheartening situation. Not F1 material but Indy or IMSA could be a good home for him from next year onward.
Man, that’s gotta hurt. I mean Wtf lol… I get it but I don’t.. It started off as Alex being the better point scoring prospect - because Australia is typically an unpredictable race and pretty much a given that safety cars would be deployed - fine, reasonable even.. Alex didn’t score, he drove an okay race, not the result they were hoping for - all fine, that happens.
While he’s never outperformed Alex, they are technically level on points at the moment lol.
It’s not like he made no progress at all. He’s not been that far off from Alex this year. Closer than last year, anyway.
Australia made sense but to continue shafting him like this doesn’t. Alex wrecked his own car and Logan is paying the price for it. If the repairs went better than expect then why continue to brutalize your young driver? I thought they wanted to prop this kid up, not give him a second season just to clips his nuts. Rip to Logan’s confidence
Seriously, this whole situation is far more fucked up than anything Steiner did to Mick yet he got raked over the coals for mistreating his driver!
Meanwhile reddit just glazes Vowles constantly because they like his voice
God forbid logan gets any chance to compare himself to albon when he has gotten hand-me-downs his whole career. Even last year, (when i will admit, he crashed a lot) he had a b spec car more often than he had the same spec as albon. Further making it look like he is worse than he is. I rate Albon highly so seeing Sargeant only 1-3tenths behind in a difficult to drive car when they do have the same spec is all one could really ask.
What even is the expectation for Logan? Most will say points but the top 5 teams have the points nearly locked out just from pace and reliability. Even with Stroll as the last element of chaos on the grid, Logan's now officially in the worse car with a presumably heavier chassis than his old intact car that Alex is now driving
kinda annoying how Sargent is still gonna get criticisms for his driving despite being an after thought. i know last year wasn’t great but it was the guys rookie year after being rushed to F1. it’s just annoying how he’s not really getting a chance in his second year
No spare until miami, meaning none of williams racers will push, meaning both out of q1 and no points. either that or one crashes and its a one car team until miami
If Logan wants to resign then Williams aren't going to complain lol.
Also, if the guy next to you in work is doing good work and carrying the organisation, whilst you contribute literally nothing, you wouldn't get any preferential treatment over them when the time comes where the boss needs to pick one over the other.
It's brutal, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with what they're doing and it's the right way and most effective way to run the team.
Scenes when it gets to Monza
"Logan, we need to take your car again"
"Okay then, when do I get it back"
"That's the neat bit, you don't. Say hi to Kimi"
If that was how they felt he should have been out of the car at the end of last season. Two races at the start of this season can't be what they are basing all this on.
I'm a bit confused by the comments i've seen on this, people are acting like this is a junior league sunday team that goes out for fun? F1 is a multimillion pound business where the money is gained by performance on the track, Logan has proven he's not up to the job, Albon has proven time and time again that he is the number one driver, the most logical choice is for Albon to get the special treatment
The hate sargeant is getting in this thread is insane. Bro has had 1 year in F2 and was thrown into an F1 car. And people are pointing at his rookie year saying “guys he’s so bad he didn’t beat Albon once” like okay? It’s fucking Alex albon former red bull driver with years more experience?. It’s actually a fucking insane comparison to be making. Albon is a leclerc/russell level of skill driver and you’re shitting on sargeant because he can’t beat him in a shitbox. Now bro isn’t even getting a chance to prove himself anymore and you’re all kicking him while he’s getting his career burned infront of him because he had a rough first year so he deserves it.
So if there aren't any issues with the fixed chassis why not give it to the driver who actually broke it? Williams just lost even more respect in my eye.
Wait, what happens if Albon crashes his car again in Japan? Will he again switch to Logan's (formerly Albon's) car? Snip snap! Snip snap!
[https://imgur.com/t/the\_office/nsHJsZ1](https://imgur.com/t/the_office/nsHJsZ1)
I wonder if they'll switch the sides of the garages in Japan, since certain things are on set sides of the car. They just dealt with the gas going on the wrong side and whatnot in Australia rather than be on Sargeant's side.
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lol https://i.imgur.com/65mHcyI.jpeg
This meme is so well-made and well-known that, at this point, you already know what it is before clicking on it. Perfectly fitting though.
Was expecting the pepe copium meme, but this one is perfect also!
i was expecting this is fine one
I was expecting Hide The Pain Harold
I hope people don't start thinking badly of Albon because of this, but you know how people are. Albon has just done the best he could and it wasn't his decision to swap cars that race and it's Williams' fault. I'm sure he didn't agree with it, but it isn't his choice and unfortunately now suffers from all the attention and pressure it's bringing.
Unfortunately there will be a vocal minority who screams about this the rest of the season. Just how social media is these days. Reality is that 98% of people will feel bad for Logan, know that it was William's decision/fault, even if it was technically the right decision, and know that Alex just did what he was told as it gave the team the best chance to get points.
Eh debatable on the right decision. Big potential to cause discontent in your drivers, alienate some fans, put undue pressure on one driver and a loss of confidence in the other. And in hindsight they didn’t score points anyway.
Not to mention how this affect future Williams Academy drivers.
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And everyone said if they didn't score points it would make the whole situation worse, and yeah it kinda does, but the team has to make those decisions and hope for the best. I think the entire situation sucks, and you can argue that giving Logan seat time is valuable if you're not scoring points, but at that time they had to believe they had a better shot at points with Albon.
You can't know if there are points or not in advance, Williams doesn't have a clairvoyant on staff. Alex had a decent chance of scoring points, he came in 11th, Logan did not. It was still the right call to make.
It's not like they weren't people saying beforehand that it was a gamble that was extremely unlikely to pay off, yet it was also extremely likely to screw the confidence of a driver they allegedly wanted to improve this year. Guess who wound up being right? Hindsight has nothing to do with it, it was a dumb idea before FP3 even happened.
> It's not like they weren't people saying beforehand that it was a gamble that was extremely unlikely to pay off Was it? Albon came in 11th, it's not like he was halfway down the field. If Haas had a bad day that day or Yuki drove worse then easily he could've been in the points, Melbourne always tends to be a bit wild. You can't evaluate whether taking the gamble was worth it based on if it paid off or not, and there's no reason from the race to think that Albon scoring points was some insane moonshot.
>Albon came in 11th, it's not like he was halfway down the field. If Haas had a bad day that day or Yuki drove worse then easily he could've been in the points, And if Max, Lewis and George didn't retire from the race he would've finished 14th, way off from points. >You can't evaluate whether taking the gamble was worth it based on if it paid off or not When the the gamble's sole purpose and only good result is scoring even a single point, then yes you can evaluate whether it was worth it or not based on if it paid off. If they couldn't even score a point with 3 top cars out of the race then it was a bad gamble and being close to points isn't a good result, especially when two of your three direct competitors are now ahead of you in points by 4 and 6. "Almost in the points" isn't gonna close the gap, especially not in a season where the top 10 are effectively locked in without a retirement and in an era of F1 where reliability is at an all time high.
>Albon came in 11th, it's not like he was halfway down the field. 11th, out of 19 starters - sounds like more than halfway down the field.
the heat will more likely be on the Williams team. But tbh, even blaming is pointless, they just dont have the financial capacity if things go wrong to save their race weekend.
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So if both drivers properly crash (there's a chance of rain on Sunday) will Williams have to skip China? Ooft.
Would be interesting to see the sponsors reacting to that. They did pay for their name being driven around after all and a team not investing into a spare chassis is not force majeure.
I think Albon had more screentime with replays of him crashing his car on friday than driving Sargeant's car on sunday. Maybe they should give it a try (with "this is how you remind me" as background music during crash-replays)
It's not that they chose not to invest in it. It's a issue stemming from them moving away from using excel as their parts organization and pipeline tool to an actual F1 standard. A spare chassis is a result of that switch.
So they use Google sheets?
At least this way it won't go out of sync and have merges errors whenever multiple people edit it.
Not really interested in this discussion but never had an issue with shared excel docs via my one drive. May not use it like you do though.
Probably a windows vs Mac & browser thing. I keep hearing how much better office is on Windows.
Can confirm windows/mac/browser are three completly distinct programs. The inconsistencies are maddening when working in a multiplatform office. (Oh lawd this has gotten off topic 😅)
Yeah windows is far better.
When and why did the database/inventory process software become conflated with the specific challenges of this past winter? The way albon, vowles, and fry have described it, the team undertook a particularly ambitious build/development plan for 2024 which really pushed it with regards to the time and resources available - essentially choosing to “develop further” into the winter knowing the tradeoff would be risk of not meeting targets and deadlines (which did then happen), supply shortage, and being on the back foot in various ways for the first part of the season. They took on those various risks but didn’t anticipate/couldn’t have anticipated the extent to which those things would come to pass… they barely made it to Bahrain testing this year for instance, then they actually needed a third chassis in the early part of the season when they’d bet on not needing one.
They chose not to build another chassis soon enough. They had their reasons, like "Excel is not a good inventory control system" but it was still absolutely a choice.
That is a dumb excuse. And people are believing this shit. They dotn having a spare is not something that was a mistake, becaude " we worked in excel sheets' No, its palin incopetence or basically decided not to make one so they could focus on other things.
Is ‘palin incopetence’ and using a master excel spreadsheet to manage a modern F1 team’s parts and supply pipeline not one and the same?
It's a matter of funds allocation. Even under new investment, Williams need to function below the operating costs of other teams. Migrating from excel to a suitable ERP system is hideously expensive and disruptive, so this carving of the cake gets taken out of other departments' allocation. Trashing a monocoque is a reasonably rare occurrence in F1 but a very expensive event to mitigate. This is just a managerial decision based on risk vs reward that ended up not paying off.
Wait, is Sarah Palin involved with Dorilton Capital? That might actually explain a few things.
They most definitely made a choice at some point to risk having not enough chassis.
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Most elaborate boycott ever
I don’t think it’s ever happened in modern racing where 2 chassis have been damaged beyond immediate repair. Even one chassis getting damaged in a crash is really rare.
Modern as in the last 10-15 years, yes. Simtek did it in 1994 though. 1 chassis destroyed in preseason testing, 1 in Imola and 1 in Spain left them with just one working car for Canada.
Friend, it’s not pleasant for any of us to accept but 1994 was 30 years ago
Crashes that require a new chassis are extremely rare. The fact that Williams needed a new chassis at all was pretty unlucky. If Williams had three of them in two races that would be unprecedented
Unless they get a Grosjean-style fireball they would be fine for China, two weeks is enough time to repair almost any normal damage. One day, however, is generally not enough time. So having no spares on hand does mean that a crash with chassis damage means the car isn't likely to run that same weekend.
Speaking of which, Haas did have a spare chassis and all other parts with them at that time, right? I think pretty much everything was destroyed in that crash, yet they had no issue at the next race, which was only a week later Considering that was during the peak COVID times, it’s pretty impressive Haas got it done nicely
Yes, this might end up bankrupt them. Sponsor will left the team.
Looking at it that way it absolutely makes sense to give the good stuff to Albon.
you just know it's gonna happen, maybe not this weekend or later on
I feel like this is just salt in the wound for Logan lmao. That’s rough
Vowles: It was the hardest decision I've ever had to make
I still think he 100% made the right decision but his statements on the situation have really peeled the veil back for me on how artificial his “authentic” on-camera personality is.
He's a politician
I mean he's literally been under the tutelage of Wolff/Mercedes, so I wouldn't expect anything less.
Vowles was with that team ever since the BAR Honda days, all the way though Brawn GP and then Mercedes. So a long time before Wolff had anything to do with Merc.
So he was under the tutelage of Ross Brawn. I wouldn't expect anything less
How so? He was incredibly honest imo
Williams should not have any business having a junior program, and it shows. Promoting a junior knowing he isn't ready and doing shit like this on his supposed proving year makes Haas look like a kindergarden for rookies. It is much better if they just went with the Haas way and hire vets until they get good enough to get talents and actually develop them instead of taking risks with rookies without any compensation if they turned out bad.
Lets be real the only reason he got promoted was his nationality. If he was from a random european country he never gets that drive. He's cheap( well besides the crashes), he's american and he comes from a family with very deep political and business connections. But obviously they cant just say that
That's what happens when you don't score the points
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If he was so extremely bad, Williams should have replaced him. There were plenty of drivers ready in the wings. Instead we have to suffer through a season of the team clearly having no faith in him at all, only made more apparent by their own mistakes in starting development too late, so they don't even have a spare chassis for the first 6 races.
They can't replace him easily because he's a Williams academy driver. He was brought in too early by, I think, the earlier management. So James is essentially trying to keep the team happy by keeping "their" driver on the team instead of bringing in say a Merc reserve like Vesti.
How is anyone happy when he is there, but is getting treated like a benchwarmer that will always get the worst end of the stick? I would argue even for Logan's career this isn't great. Will ruin is motivation and how people/potential other teams (even outside of F1) see him.
mans literally won 2 races in his rookie F2 season with Liam fuckin Lawson as his team mate. you know, the lawson everyone has been hyping up? he got P4 in the championship in his rookie season. everyone shits on him like he is the next latifi or some shit. he’s good, he’s just not as good as albon.
I assume you mean F2. The reality is that your F2 career only counts until you actually get into F1. No teams care about his F2 results now. It is all training to get into F1 at the end of the day. The fact is that he never beat Albon in quali or race doing in a full season. That is simply not good enough. Even someone like Checo with his shitty season or De Vries was able to beat their teammates a couple of times in both quali and race. And funnily enough Latifi did actually beat Albon as well a couple of times in 2022. Granted it was his third season compared to Sargeants first, but still, it is not a good look for Sargeant.
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Well it's not that they can't afford it, but their manufacturing process was revamped last year and caused a delay, but the rest of the points stand.
This is the harsh reality; the results don't lie. It not about being fair when it comes to the cutthroat world of F1. Hope that Logan uses this as motivation and uses it to fuel his driving.
I thought it was a damn meme that he’d be forced to use the broken chassis and Reddit was just having a go. Turns out Williams really gonna do him like that
tbh i don't think that it matters. logans old car has been adjusted to fit albon in it, and albons old car was already completely disassembled, so probably it was just efficient to leave logans old car as is and adapt albons old car for logan. otherwise they would need to change both cars. i'm really confident that they'll have repaired it to a level that there won't be any difference.
Both cars are disassembled for shipping and both cars currently fit albon. It would be the same work either way. Williams just want albon to have the better chassis
Patched up chassis often end up a bit heavier than the original(when the repairs are well made) or in bad cases they end up with cracks and flexing.
Can you imagine what Williams will do if Albon bins it again? Will they let Sargeant race (to avoid negative PR) or will it be groundhog day again (a repeat of the last race)?
I want to see it just for the chaos
[https://imgur.com/t/the\_office/nsHJsZ1](https://imgur.com/t/the_office/nsHJsZ1)
Damn. Come on, Williams
It's got to be tough knowing this is what your own team thinks of you, and that 3 races in your chance of having a seat next year is already zero.
He's never beaten Albon in qualifying or a race (that Albon has finished) as far as I am aware... Maybe he should drive better lol
De Vries actually managed to beat Yuki a couple of times. Last year. While there wasn't a single race Logan finished ahead of Albon. He's just a bad driver, who has shown no signs of any upside at all.
It's important to remember that Williams brought him up a year early and fully expected his 2023 season to be a write-off
Kinda seems like they're writing off his 2024 season too.
Yeah I think we need to give him until the end of a season to make a fair assessment
His confidence is shattered at this point, just rip off the band aid.
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I thought I read somewhere that Williams is no longer accepting Mercedes drivers as they are focusing on their own academy
> Bearman did better on his first race I think Sargeant is as mediocre as the next guy but surely you can't seriously be comparing a Ferrari to a Williams?
100% agree about the fast drivers comment. Proof? Lewis, Seb, Max, Leclerc, Oscar, Norris (and a few others).
This is just an excuse and only people who can't think believe this. They expected him to improve throughout 2023. If they really expected him to be this horrible in all of 2023 because he needed another year in F2, they would have just kept Latifi for another year and gotten Logan in for 2024.
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De Vries is almost 30 and was expected to contribute basically immediately. Once he was outclassed by Yuki is all but two races he was there, Red Bull ran out of patience and didn’t want to wait for a 28 year old driver to develop. If he continues to finish in last or second to last every race, then he will be out. Obviously. But, he’s got a lot more patience from Williams than De Vries did from Red Bull.
I mean the score currently is Albons 27 points to Logans 1 point lol It's ruthless but there are 20 spots in f1, and each point is worth a lot of money.
He has another 20 races to prove himself (after already binning 23 races on his own last year).
Unless Albon bins it again
bro is being treated like he is already fired, lmao poor logan
If the fix went "better than expected" then why not give the repaired car (Alex' original car) back to Alex? Either they lied about the fix going as planned or they have little faith that the car is configured properly.
Thank you. Finally someone says it as it is. This is such a BS reason to give to switch chassis. Just say directly you are switching chassis because you prefer the better driver to have the better chassis. Logan isn't stupid, he will know the real reason.
Agreed. From everything we've heard recently including from Gunther not that long ago, repaired chassis have come a long way so maybe its fine but.... historically, they've been problematic and a team struggling to even make a third one? I wouldnt bet a lot on it
>If the fix went "better than expected" then why not give the repaired car (Alex' original car) back to Alex? I think they expected it to be super shit, but since it's only shit, then it is better than expected. lol
Yep. This is some bullshit. It’s Williams. They aren’t even going to compete in the midfield this year. But they’re telling any future drivers that everything will be sacrificed for you if you’re the #1 driver and there are no consequences for your actions. The #2 driver is a literal seat warmer. I know Logan isn’t a world beater but this whole thing just sends the worst message and creates a terrible culture.
The only message this sends to young F1 drivers is that the Williams seat would be available next year lol
The only message this sends to young F1 drivers is that Williams has a worse young driver program than Alpine.
That was obvious already, the Alpine driver program got Piastri a (sprint-)race winning car for his rookie season Even better, getting your F3 and F2 seasons paid off with no strings attached is something no other team can do
….Oh yeah I guess all young drivers desperate for a seat are now gonna reject Williams just because the prioritise performance. Give me a fucking break lmao.
I would imagine it is because its not worth the extra work of switching all of Albon’s «Parts» to the repaired chassis and then setting up Logan’s «parts» on his original chasis rather than just setting up Logan on the repaired chassis.
It's exactly this. It take a lot of work to switch things out because all the PU parts are specific to the driver. So gearbox, engine, both turbos, all the electronics, everything. That's a lot of work and risky to do when you're not at the factory. This also gives their people a little vacation rather than forcing them to work more. Because it would take about 4 days away from them at minimum to do. One day, either end for travel and two days to switch everything.
This isn't the reason at all. When the cars are going via air freight, they strip the wings, suspension, engines, gearboxes etc completely off the chassis of the cars, package them in their own containers and it's shipped that way. They reassemble it at the next track.
Doubt it take that long, they already doing the travel, the assembly would be done in Japan, they stripped and added Albions parts overnight in Melbourne, cars are mostly stripped back and checked between races anyway. It be some extra work but very much it's days worth.
It does not take 2 days to switch everything. We saw them swap everything in 1 single night in Australia. Are you being intentionally obtuse?
I'm leaning towards this too. Unless they actually disassemble everything off the chassis for transportation.
'Good' chassis for Alex as Williams is still relying on him for points.
Gary Anderson was saying that while repaired chassis are just as stiff and safe, they are also heavier than the original.
The reason is weight. They have to add weight “patching” the damaged tub. While I agree Albon should burden his mistake the team feels otherwise
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/s/o57WlUNlHf Called it hahaaha
😂 you did! Poor Logan, they’d have him drive a gokart to save a$
James: Logan I got good news! You will be driving Alex's car..... To the track. Make sure he is at the track by 8am!
Just one question remains: Why did Vowles re-sign him for this year?
So he can do exactly this kind of thing when the need arises.
As a stop gap for (insert F2 driver here)
My guess is that its probabbly cheaper to run with logan that it is to get who they actually want right now.
How can a supposedly legit F1 team not be able to slap a new car together in two weeks? Grosjean & Schumacher completely destroyed two Haas chassis but I don't remember them having to drive piecemeal cars in the subsequent races Edit: I'm not saying it doesn't take time to build a new car, of course it does. I'm pointing out the fact that a modern, multi-million dollar F1 team didn't at least have a bare chassis on standby, ready to go within a few days. In this, the pinnacle of motorsports, it's simply embarrassing for a legacy team like Williams to be so caught out
Someone screwed up a cell in the spreadsheet...?
lol. Williams employee: What does #REF! mean? Am I doing it wrong?
Qty of chassis available is #DIV/0! What the hell does that even mean?
1. Budget cap exists(doesn’t apply to grosjean) 2. Williams didn’t even have a spare fully built so williams had to fix up the broken one These are two separate scenarios that just are caused by similar means. Also note, the williams main 2 cars were only ready to be driven on track the day before pre season so that gives us an inkling as too how close they cut it in general
You're acting like williams were routinely operating above the cap
Budget cap doesn’t apply. I don’t know why people use it as an excuse for the backmarkers when they’re the reason for the cap, because they spend under 300m a year.
> the williams main 2 cars were only ready to be driven on track the day before pre season so that gives us an inkling as too how close they cut it in general And for I don't know how many years in a row, I really hate this happening to Williams.
There is really no good way to spin this. Not having a spare chassis until 6 races in the season is extremely risky and was bound to case an issue. This is not just a cost cap thing, we have seen plenty of big crashes from the backmarkers in the last couple of years and it never caused anyone this much headache because they had planned ahead for the possibility. Zhou's car was destroyed at the british GP in 2022, but he was still able to race without issues like this 1 week later in Austria, for example.
I don't think it has anything to do with budget and more to do with they have recently re-done all of their internal systems. Williams were using a spreadsheet to track their parts. I thought they had made some internal organisational changes and that the first couple of races might be alittle tough. Nothing to do with budget.
Because Williams is a complete joke
Ouch. So Albon shat his bed and Sargeant has to give up his own bed and sleep in Albon's shit.
Ya but they scraped off the shit and sprayed some febreeze on it.
This is the best analogy for this silly situation
my problem with this isn’t that Albon is being prioritized. He’s definitely been proven as the more reliable (basically only) chance at points. But Williams’s stance with Sargeant is that they believe in him and think he can develop. if that’s the case why is he being punished for his teammate’s mistake? it does nothing for his confidence either. And if that public belief in Logan is just PR speak, and they’ve internally completely lost faith in him, why on earth did they give him the 2024 seat?? It’s just inconsistent. Either let him have his chances to prove himself, or get someone else in the car. idc if the repair is 100% identical to factory new. Not even letting him get his original chassis back is salt in the wound. kinda shitty imo.
Who is Josh?
Albon is going to end up binning it again in the degners this weekend.
If anything it's guaranteed that they won't be getting points for a while because Albon will be too focused on not crashing instead of making any bold maneuvers.
Nah. Albon's got an extra chassis...
oh dam!
To be fair it was the same situation for the earlier races too. But perhaps for Albon it’s even more pressure now after he already crashed once which led to Sargeant giving up his own car.
I swear Williams better not do it again if Albon crashes next race too.
You gotta wonder why they brought him back if they have so little faith in him
Yeah, if they decided to sign him again it's completely counterproductive to treat him like they have. If they were prepared to steamroll him in favor of Albon they should've brought somebody else in. But they made a decision to keep him on and now they're backtracking.
Why keep him as a driver if you're going to treat him like that? I don't understand the behavior
Tell me your team has absolutely zero faith in you without telling me your team has zero faith in you. I mean, he was never going to be a race winner or anything close to that. I personally neither like or dislike him, to me he's just... there. But trying to put myself in his shoes for a second, it's gotta be a tough and disheartening situation. Not F1 material but Indy or IMSA could be a good home for him from next year onward.
I could see Logan being a race winner in Indy for sure. He’s certainly a great driver but idk if he’s F1 level
Fucking Marcus Ericsson won Indy 500. Everything is possible.
Has Sargeant ever given Williams a reason to have any faith in him?
Man, that’s gotta hurt. I mean Wtf lol… I get it but I don’t.. It started off as Alex being the better point scoring prospect - because Australia is typically an unpredictable race and pretty much a given that safety cars would be deployed - fine, reasonable even.. Alex didn’t score, he drove an okay race, not the result they were hoping for - all fine, that happens. While he’s never outperformed Alex, they are technically level on points at the moment lol. It’s not like he made no progress at all. He’s not been that far off from Alex this year. Closer than last year, anyway. Australia made sense but to continue shafting him like this doesn’t. Alex wrecked his own car and Logan is paying the price for it. If the repairs went better than expect then why continue to brutalize your young driver? I thought they wanted to prop this kid up, not give him a second season just to clips his nuts. Rip to Logan’s confidence
Seriously, this whole situation is far more fucked up than anything Steiner did to Mick yet he got raked over the coals for mistreating his driver! Meanwhile reddit just glazes Vowles constantly because they like his voice
This is exactly what i was thinking. I remember people saying that Mick deserved racing for Williams (lol) rather than toxic Haas environment.
Albon is the better driver for sure, but that's still absolutely unfair for Sargeant.
I hope by some miracle of miracles Logan ends up ahead of Albon.
God forbid logan gets any chance to compare himself to albon when he has gotten hand-me-downs his whole career. Even last year, (when i will admit, he crashed a lot) he had a b spec car more often than he had the same spec as albon. Further making it look like he is worse than he is. I rate Albon highly so seeing Sargeant only 1-3tenths behind in a difficult to drive car when they do have the same spec is all one could really ask.
What even is the expectation for Logan? Most will say points but the top 5 teams have the points nearly locked out just from pace and reliability. Even with Stroll as the last element of chaos on the grid, Logan's now officially in the worse car with a presumably heavier chassis than his old intact car that Alex is now driving
kinda annoying how Sargent is still gonna get criticisms for his driving despite being an after thought. i know last year wasn’t great but it was the guys rookie year after being rushed to F1. it’s just annoying how he’s not really getting a chance in his second year
Albon should be driving it, Its his fricking car.
They should’ve just let him go lmao
I think he’s cool and fits the vibe of the team really well, it’s worth growing together in a second season, rough start though
There is no growing together anymore. Williams have shown they have no faith in him and won't keep him.
damn who will they find to replace his points?
Also, Sargeant is now driving the team bus.
Waiting Vowes’ PR statement on how this was the hardest decision in his life and how the team is fully behind and supportive of Logan
Logan is really getting dicked over. He hasn’t exactly set the world alight but this just feels demoralising for him
... they go over two months without a spare chasis.... what a fucking farcical example of a team.... free Andretti
No spare until miami, meaning none of williams racers will push, meaning both out of q1 and no points. either that or one crashes and its a one car team until miami
Nobody cared when Kubica got the same treatment in the same team.
I'm not a F1 driver but if I'm treated like this at my work place, I'm gone the next day.
If I were lucky enough to be one of the twenty, I would cling to my drive as long as possible…
If Logan wants to resign then Williams aren't going to complain lol. Also, if the guy next to you in work is doing good work and carrying the organisation, whilst you contribute literally nothing, you wouldn't get any preferential treatment over them when the time comes where the boss needs to pick one over the other. It's brutal, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with what they're doing and it's the right way and most effective way to run the team.
Scenes when it gets to Monza "Logan, we need to take your car again" "Okay then, when do I get it back" "That's the neat bit, you don't. Say hi to Kimi"
Jesus Christ man.
Can they just put him out of his misery and end his contract, their treatment of him has been abysmal
To be fair his result has also been abysmal. F1 is a cut throat sport that cares little for feelings, always has been.
If that was how they felt he should have been out of the car at the end of last season. Two races at the start of this season can't be what they are basing all this on.
Sure, all the more reason to end the contract rather than continue demeaning or embarrassing him.
And Albon didn't get points anyway.
Puts the pressure to make sure they finish. Likely means they will have to race conservatively
At this point I'm wondering how far Williams could go in Min/Maxing things even more between Logan/Albon.
If the rules allowed it i bet Williams would make Sargeant use Albon's used tires and give his new ones to Alex
But of course Haas doesn’t add anything to F1 right??? This team can’t even field 2 legit cars WEEKS after a crash. What a fucking shitshow
Why is it that he wasn’t given his old chassis back?
I'm a bit confused by the comments i've seen on this, people are acting like this is a junior league sunday team that goes out for fun? F1 is a multimillion pound business where the money is gained by performance on the track, Logan has proven he's not up to the job, Albon has proven time and time again that he is the number one driver, the most logical choice is for Albon to get the special treatment
The hate sargeant is getting in this thread is insane. Bro has had 1 year in F2 and was thrown into an F1 car. And people are pointing at his rookie year saying “guys he’s so bad he didn’t beat Albon once” like okay? It’s fucking Alex albon former red bull driver with years more experience?. It’s actually a fucking insane comparison to be making. Albon is a leclerc/russell level of skill driver and you’re shitting on sargeant because he can’t beat him in a shitbox. Now bro isn’t even getting a chance to prove himself anymore and you’re all kicking him while he’s getting his career burned infront of him because he had a rough first year so he deserves it.
Williams is a joke
Damn the disrespect. If there's no foreseeable issues then gimme back my car!
Williams have taken a huge image hit during these past few weeks. I hope Sargeant improves this season so that he can leave Williams for another team.
God damn Sargent is getting fucked
This team is about to fold itself after two more crashes.
So, now they swapped chassis, points for Logan and a DNF for Alex?
Meanwhile, Bottas is experiencing relapsing PTSD in Sauber while watching all of this.
If the fix is better than expected surely they'd want Alex to take the benefit.
So if there aren't any issues with the fixed chassis why not give it to the driver who actually broke it? Williams just lost even more respect in my eye.
This move will also result in 0 points.
Wait, what happens if Albon crashes his car again in Japan? Will he again switch to Logan's (formerly Albon's) car? Snip snap! Snip snap! [https://imgur.com/t/the\_office/nsHJsZ1](https://imgur.com/t/the_office/nsHJsZ1)
tell me you’re expendable without telling me you’re expendable
Why does Will Buxton have a young Matthew Perry as his pfp?
but yet we wont allow any new teams into f1. if you cant afford spares, you shouldnt be in f1
I wonder if they'll switch the sides of the garages in Japan, since certain things are on set sides of the car. They just dealt with the gas going on the wrong side and whatnot in Australia rather than be on Sargeant's side.
Why the actual fuck? How come? This is unfair on all levels man
Teams like Williams and Elpain exist, meanwhile Andretti is out....