Despite concerns that last year’s slew of crashes would hurt Williams’ FW47, James Vowles says he doubts it will have a “systemic effect” but he does expect a “small amount of pain”.

Last season Williams topped F1’s ‘World Destructors’ Championship’ list with 17 “relatively major accidents”, as Vowles put it, that hit the team’s pocket hard with the repair bill estimated at just under €14 million.

Williams had almost as many crashes as there were races

It not only impacted the team’s ability to improve the FW46 as they instead had to constantly build new parts or repair old ones, but the Williams team principal feared it would also impact the team going into 2025.

“They have an impact, you can’t have so many crashes without slowing down future years… Without a doubt, it has certainly had an impact on how we shape the following year,” he said ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix.

Qatar would go down as the last venue where Williams added to their 2024 crashes, Franco Colapinto caught up in the wreckage when Nico Hulkenberg tried to dive on the inside of Esteban Ocon and the two collided.

“It’s a distraction away from ’25, there’s no doubt about it,” Vowles said. “The implication is you have to take a little bit away from next year’s cost cap – that’s the frustration behind it.

“What we’re talking about is a few hundreds of thousands that I wish we weren’t spending this year that we could spend next year.”

So far though, Williams have managed to avoid the pain.

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The second team to shake down their F1 2025 car, the FW47, having done so at Silverstone on Valentine’s Day, Williams’ pre-season programme are going according to plan with the next stop pre-season testing in Bahrain on Wednesday.

Although Vowles concedes there could be pain later in the year, he said as per Autosport that it is “not noticeable so far.

“There will be a small amount of pain, but that is just the facts behind it – you cannot have over 20 crashes in 24 races, you cannot have that without some sort of damage felt.

“The best way I can summarise it is I don’t think we’ll have a systemic effect on how we’re adjusting to it.”

Albon too sees no hangover from last year’s crashes.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t say last year’s [crashes] played an impact in the development of this year’s car,” said the Thai-British racer.

Williams will be hoping to avoid a repeat of last year’s crash tally this season, which Vowles admitted after the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix had left the cars “battered and bruised”.

“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.”

Williams finished the season ninth in the Constructors’ Championship having scored just 17 points.

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