Karun Chandhok praises James Vowles for Alex Albon call at Australian Grand Prix

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Karun Chandhok has hailed the ‘strong’ Williams team principal James Vowles for sidelining Logan Sargeant in favour of Alex Albon at the Australian Grand Prix.

Albon will drive Sargeant’s car for the remainder of the weekend after crashing his own in first practice in Melbourne.

And writing on X (formerly Twitter), Chandhok applauded Vowles for the controversial decision.

With 20 minutes remaining in FP1, Albon lost the rear of his Williams car on the exit of turn six.

He subsequently hit the wall twice, causing significant damage to his FW46.

It then emerged that Williams hadn’t brought a spare chassis to the event, and they couldn’t repair it on Albon’s car.

With only one car running for the remainder of the weekend, Vowles has decided to prioritise Albon.

That means Sargeant will be a spectactor for qualifying and the race, even though he wasn’t the one who made the mistake.

Karun Chandhok says James Vowles showed strength

Chandhok acknowledged that Vowles’ decision was ‘brutal’ but maintains that it was ‘absolutely right’.

He feels that the former Mercedes strategist has displayed assertive leadership by picking Albon.

The Thai driver offers Williams ‘the most chance’ of scoring their first points of the season.

He wrote: “As I said in commentary soon after we learned of the chassis damage, it’s a brutal call to make on Logan Sargeant but it’s absolutely the right one.

“James Vowles showing strong and bold leadership by getting the driver who has the most chance of scoring on the grid.”

Did Vowles make the right call on Sargeant?

Sargeant will no doubt feel extremely hard done by given that it was Albon who faltered.

Sky Sports F1’s Ted Kravitz suggested before the decision was made that dropping the American for the weekend would go against Williams’ values as a team.

However, the former Red Bull driver scored 27 of the team’s 28 points last season.

He out-raced Sargeant 18 times and also secured a clean sweep in their qualifying head-to-head.

He’s extended those runs to 20-3 and 24-0 respectively in the first two races of the new campaign.

Kravitz’s colleague Martin Brundle countered that it was a ‘no-brainer’ to favour Albon.

Perhaps the biggest issue here is Williams’ lack of spare parts, something that left Kravitz stunned.

Details of the team’s ‘shocking’ winter emerged this week, with the team just about winning a race against time to make it to round one in Bahrain.

But it appears that the strains of the off-season are still taking their toll nearly a month into the 2024 calendar.