Williams facing race against time to repair Logan Sargeant’s car in time for quali

Williams say they will “give it everything” to repair Logan Sargeant’s car in time for quali after the American’s fiery crash in FP3.

Sargeant crashed after dipping a wheel onto the grass early in FP3 and his car took significant damage, including a fire that broke out from the engine area. Williams though are confident the chassis can be repaired in time for quali at 3pm track time.

Williams in race against time to repair Logan Sargeant’s car

Sargeant’s place in qualifying looked immediately under threat following the crash with a limited number of hours between the incident and the start of quali.

But Williams said the chassis appears to not have taken major damage and they will attempt to have it ready for Q1.

“We are assessing the chassis but it currently looks okay,” Williams said. “We will aim to repair and build up the chassis to be ready for qualifying, however with the amount of work to be completed it will be difficult, but we’ll give it everything.”

The crash was even more disappointing for Williams given the upgrades on both drivers’ cars and team boss James Vowles said “hundreds of hours” had been spent on the modifications.

“There are hundreds of hours spent on this update,” he said.

“It looks like it’s working well, but there are few of them in the world. Really the worst time is when you just introduce it with small amounts of bits and you put it into the wall.

“The other difficulty is it’s FP3 and qualifying is going to be on us pretty quickly, and it’s in a pretty bad state.”

More to come