This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
I believe it’s been confirmed now. What a load of *hit!! If I was Logan I’d be like no I haven’t stuffed it in the wall!!
Makes total sense for the team, as annoying as it is for Logan and the fans.
My question is why is there no spare chassis at this stage, are they still miles behind on their parts production?
I'd guess they likely haven't finished manufacturing the spare chassis tubs, all focus was on getting the car out the door for the start of the season. It'll probably be worth the pain if Vowles changes leads to better performance on the track in the long term.
I have been inside the Williams Factory; all be it over 10 years ago. Even then it looked dated compared to the McLaren Technology centre. Seeing the gears for gear boxes being machined and assembled was pretty cool.
If you gambol your last few notes on a horse, you pick the one most likely to give you a return, not the one that seems the fair option, and Williams are in that position.
When arguing with a fool, be sure the other person is not doing the same thing.
My only question would be:
Are the points that Albon may or may not score worth the PR hit as well as the internal conflict that this definitely creates?
This will surely create a bad feeling from half of the team, and a bad image for possible sponsors as well as for the fans, especially the ones from the USA, who are the ones everyone in F1 is trying to please right now.
I know Williams are not new to making decisions thinking only of the short term, as illustrated by the terrible pay-drivers they had over the recent years, but at which point do they realize this sort of choice doesn't pull them from the deep grave they've dug themselves?
I think most people would agree that if you're Williams and you only have one car, you're going to put Albon in it. Admittedly, if there was any track Albon has a history of accidents at, (albeit a short history, but still) it's Melbourne. I wonder if they were on the fence about it until Sargeant spun in FP2 and for about 0.6s Williams thought "holy f*** we might have zero chassis after this." Sure, he ended up not hitting anything but still it was hardly confidence-inspiring.
As far as the "American" aspect of it, I think it's pretty clear over the last six months or so that F1 wants American money, but not our people. The mainstream US audience that Liberty so vehemently chased over the last three years has mostly switched off from F1, at least from what I can see. That's because most Americans demand endless stimulation and jeopardy over who wins and have zero attention span . You know what doesn't provide endless stimulation and jeopardy over who wins? Modern F1. Ironically this is looking like one of the closest weekends in a while but your average Joe on the street isn't going to know or care, sadly.
Back to Williams, testing began a month ago and still not having a third chassis is extremely worrying. And they have a bunch of flyaway races that aren't exactly optimal for chassis repair or replacement coming up. At this point, wouldn't the smart thing to do be to tell Albon to take things extremely carefully—i.e., back off and probably not contend for points—because another chassis write off would almost certainly jeopardize the next races? What a nightmare.
"You can't argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"
- Mark Twain
