“Self-inflicted injury” in Williams’ 2024 F1 crash-fest.

Alex Albon They say Williams He suffered a “self-inflicted injury” due to time-saving measures taken early in the season as well as weight gain on his 2024 Formula 1 car, which led to additional crash damage.

The British team’s 2024 season was marred by accidents from start to finish, with its FW46 car even going over the 798kg weight limit at the start of the year. It was losing 0.45 seconds per lapBefore it was lightened through its development program.

In part, this was due to early iterations of some chassis components – such as suspension parts – being made of metal rather than lightweight carbon-fibre.

This was deemed necessary because Williams had changed its car manufacturing process for the previous year, which meant parts arrived much later, as it was attempting to modernize its production system.

With metal parts being faster to produce than carbon ones, Williams is also trying to make its car lighter anyway.

It managed to shave 14 kg off its total chassis weight compared to 2023, while still exceeding the limits.

But the extra weight of the metal parts meant more force going through the monocoque in a crash, such as when Williams forced to sideline Logan Sargent after Albon crashes In Australian Grand Prix practice, his chassis was too damaged to be reused and the team had no spare equipment at the time.

When Albon was asked if there was a specific reason for so many accidents, he revealed the situation, Franco Colapinto And Sargent had just gone into the season.

“There’s a mix,” Albon told Motorsport.com in an exclusive interview. “There is a mix of driver errors, a mix of issues.

“I wouldn’t call them car-related problems, but, for example, like Brazil (where Albon crashed in the Geely Q3), there are things where from a technical point of view, it’s like a driver’s problem, but it’s not really I am not.

“It’s just the systems that were in place… we changed and the areas where they were very difficult.

“Together, we could have done a better job and I think we would have been able to survive this. So, there’s a little something going on.

“It’s also like, even if you take the beginning of the year, for example, we went through quite a few tubs. I think Melbourne was one of them. Suzuka was one.

“But, really, if you look at it, part of the problem is the weight (issue) itself.

“We had some pieces on the car that were metal instead of carbon. So, they were actually making some broken tubs.

“So, it was almost like a self-fulfilling injury that we suffered. So, there are things that meant from race one we were on the backfoot.

When Motorsport.com put Albon’s point to Williams chief engineer Dave Robson, he replied: “Yeah, that’s somewhat true.

“Not sure if that cause and effect statement is exactly right, but we certainly had some metal components on the car that are now all carbon and should have been carbon from the beginning.

“And it definitely changes the load going through the chassis, so these are the front suspension parts.

“The reason for doing this is that you can design a metal trackrod and machine them far more quickly than you can make carbon components.

“So, once you get behind, this is a way to recover some time. If the component is something like trackroad you pay a small lump sum penalty for that.

“They were on the car for a while and then we soon updated them and certainly if you do that to some of the front suspension components and then you have a heavy impact, the load of the chassis is a little bit different. It does happen, so yes it could possibly have contributed to some teething issues.”