Vowles delivers verdict on Albon's crashed Williams chassis

Williams boss James Vowles is optimistic Alex Albon's potentially damaged chassis can be repaired after his Japanese Grand Prix crash.

On the opening lap, Albon was clipped by the RB of Daniel Ricciardo, resulting in a head-on smash with a tyre barrier and damaging the car.

It is the third major incident suffered by Williams in the last two race weekends following Albon's Australian practice crash which led to Vowles benching Logan Sargeant for the Thai-British driver as that chassis could not be repaired trackside, with no third chassis available.

Sargeant then crashed that chassis in Friday practice at Suzuka, before Albon's accident damaged the second tub, which will now be assessed at the team's Grove base for possible repairs.

Vowles is optimistic the damage should not be too severe, with no third chassis planned until Miami.

"It looks like a little bit of damage again on the front right, by complete coincidence," Vowles told F1TV. "But let's see how bad it is. It looks like it is repairable to me, but that was through images taken."

Reflecting on the previous two weeks, Vowles also detailed how the chassis repair work would have an impact on the upgrade schedule for the FW46.

"The last two weeks have been tough," he said. "I think for any team to have three major accidents where you've pretty much taken out all the equipment on the car is enormous, and taking it across the season, you can deal with it, but taking it across a few races is difficult.

"The impact will be making spares as quickly as possible in the background, but ultimately it will have an impact on performance as we can't bring as many updates as the ones on the car are broken and we've got to build those stocks back up again.

"Hopefully we can recycle some of those bits, but they are pretty much gone."