Topping the crash damage table in 2024, James Vowles admits that will have an impact on 2025 although the team tried to limit that by repairing what they could.

From Alex Albon’s chassis-destroying crash in the opening practice session of the Australian Grand Prix to Franco Colapinto’s lap 1 DNF in Qatar, Williams’ 2024 was marred by accidents – and big ones.

Williams: It’s fair to say our cars have been quite battered and bruised

When all was said and done after what team principal Vowles revealed was 17 accidents over the course of the 24-race season, Williams’ repair bill for F1 2024 was a reported €13,839,600.

That was more than double Red Bull’s €6,148,400, the Milton Keynes squad second on the ‘World Destructors’ Championship‘ list.

It was a heavy burden for Williams carry and one that Vowles says hampered their performance in the final few races of the season.

Not only did Williams fail to score a point in the last five races, they recorded one retirement in every one of those races and even a DNS with Alex Albon unable to take the start grid in Brazil after his huge qualifying crash.

Williams finished the season ninth in the Constructors’ Championship on 17 points, 29 behind eighth-placed Racing Bulls.

“It’s fair to say our cars have been quite battered and bruised over the last few Grands Prix,” the Williams team boss said his post-Abu Dhabi ‘The Vowles Verdict’. “That has an impact on where we are ultimately performance-wise.

“Starting the year on the back foot in terms of parts cost us. Later on in the year with the amount of damage we had, which was extraordinary – 17 relatively major accidents – put us on the back foot in terms of parts.

“Very few teams, or no teams I should say, could cope with that amount of attrition and I’m really proud of what Williams achieved in pulling together in those tough, tough times to build the cars that we had.”

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Vowles admits the extensive crashes will have an impact on Williams’ 2025 preparations.

“The biggest impact on 2025 has been the amount of attrition, the amount of accidents we’ve had over these last Grands Prix,” he said.

“We’ve been managing it as best as possible, it’s fair to say we haven’t been building new and trying to keep back stock so we can try to maximise opportunities into 2025.”

Williams will be hoping to avoid a repeat of this year’s early rounds next year when the team raced with a spare chassis. That meant when Albon crashed in Australia, his then-team-mate Logan Sargeant was sidelined in order to give the Thai-British racer his car.

Williams finally had a spare car available at the Miami Grand Prix, round six of the championship.

Vowles explained the hold up in Melbourne, saying: “As a result of the work that took place across the winter, we stressed the organisation to the absolute limits. We pushed everything as far as it could do and what it meant as a result of that is off the back end of being very late on some of the production, the spare chassis [completion date] starts to move backwards.

“No team plans to come to an event without a spare chassis. In doing so you create risk. In the absolute best case, it’s uncomfortable. In the worst case, one of the cars is not racing and that’s the situation we face today.

“We have to ensure that we never, ever put ourselves in that situation again going forward in the future. We are here to go racing and to only have one car here on Saturday and Sunday simply isn’t what we’re built to do.”

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