Vowles issues update on Albon's chassis ahead of Japan

Williams boss James Vowles is confident that the team will be able to repair Alex Albon's damaged chassis in time for the Japanese Grand Prix.

A heavy crash during the first practice session heavily damaged Albon's original chassis for the Melbourne weekend, and with no spare on-site in Melbourne owing to car-build delays in pre-season, Williams was forced to field only one car.

Vowles took the decision to bench Logan Sargeant for Albon, who it was deemed was the more likely of the two to score points, although the Thai could only manage 11th in the race.

After a race to return the damaged chassis to the factory, Vowles has offered an update on the state of the repair ahead of the trip to Suzuka across the weekend of April 5-7th.

Vowles' update

"I am confident that we will be able to fix the chassis," Vowles explained during his in-house team video debrief.

"We've put measures in place to make sure the chassis was back [at the factory] really early on Monday morning, I think it arrived 2am Monday morning.

"The crew inside the building working on that, stripping it down and doing repairs, and, just an update, today we’re in a good place for having the chassis back early enough for Suzuka.

"A lot of the work was done back in Melbourne.

"There were photographs and techniques called NDT, which is non-destructive testing, so, there are various [tests ]you can do.

"But it allows us to fully understand how big the damage is and what we have to do.

"That preparation was key. What it meant was, already at 2am on Monday, work could start.

"It wasn’t a reflection of what was happening. It was more: 'This is what we’re doing and this is how we’ll execute it.' So, in Suzuka, we’ll have two cars without too many issues."