Car
What happens to a damaged Formula 1 chassis after a crash?
by Scott Mitchell-Malm
5min read
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What happens if your driver crashes twice in two weekends? Earlier this Formula 1 season, Williams had to contend with that unenviable task.
The aftermath of Alex Albon’s crash with Daniel Ricciardo in the 2024 Japanese GP
First, it was Alex Albon’s big crash in Australia, then his first-lap accident with Daniel Ricciardo in Japan. It is not exactly uncommon for F1 teams to enact off-site repair jobs between races, they are just usually less attention-grabbing because the team in question has a spare and isn’t facing a race against time to repair one of its only race chassis.
As Williams brought the topic front and centre, and team members yet again pushed through the pain to get a second damaged chassis sorted for the Chinese Grand Prix, there was no better time for team principal James Vowles to talk us through exactly what this kind of job entails: starting with the moment the mangled car gets back to the garage at the circuit.
What happens at the track?
When the chassis is returned to the pits, the first step is to strip it back – taking off the wheels and the nose – as the team doesn’t know the extent of the damage. G-force levels can be measured in the moment but there are often other visual cues on inspection: for example, the engine could be sitting at a different angle, the gearbox could be cracked or suspension members could be broken.
Teams do have some telemetry from the accident, but they delve deeper by plugging a download cable into the car to extract more data. What the team is looking for here is information on ‘overloads’: how much force and energy went into each suspension member, for instance, or the forces that went through the gearbox.
The extra data answers whether or not certain components can be salvaged. With a limited number of gearboxes and engine components available for use over a season, teams will want to salvage as many as they can.
Williams erected garage barriers in Melbourne as it assessed the damage from Alex Albon’s crash
Damage to the nose of Logan Sargeant’s Williams' car after an FP1 crash at that Japanese GP.
On-site inspection can quite quickly reveal areas of the car that are worst affected and give an initial prognosis of specific problems after a crash. Wishbone misalignment relative to the chassis and damage to the carbon-fibre monocoque are just a couple of examples.
A spare chassis is necessary when the suspension cannot be physically bolted to the chassis anymore because of damage – or if there’s a crack in the carbon-fibre, for example.
Perforated carbon-fibre panels cannot be fixed trackside. At Melbourne, Williams’s chassis was not cracked, but a piece of suspension had embedded itself by piercing what is known as an ‘insert’ within the chassis’s carbon skin.
It’s often difficult to assess at the track whether a chassis needs major surgery, or whether it needs to be bonded back together with glue. The team then takes images and sends them, along with as much data as possible, back to the factory for structural engineers and designers to assess.
Non-destructive testing is then used by the team track-side to recreate and understand the problem, plus the extend of the damage. The team uses a coloured liquid to show where the cracks in the chassis are, or ultrasound – pulses of energy that resonate through the chassis – to find any cracks.
Ultrasound was relevant to Williams in Melbourne, where it revealed very useful information about how deep the issue was and how much of the area had been affected.
Daniel Ricciardo skids off the track at the start of the 2024 Japanese GP
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What happens at the factory?
Doing as much work as possible trackside enables a team to be more prepared to receive the chassis and begin the repair work, as the structural engineers already mined through a combination of data and NDT (non-destructive testing).
But the car has to get to the factory first. So at the same time, there are people working in logistics carving out a plan to get the chassis home – which, for Williams, was the worst-case scenario at the last two events. It was doubly exhausting to be charting a course back to the UK from Australia, then back out to Japan, then back to the UK again because of more damage, then out to China once more.
An in-weekend crash, especially at a flyaway race, inevitably means the chassis will not return until the early hours of Sunday or Monday at the earliest. The distance, how quickly transporting the cargo can be arranged, and the complication of clearing customs will determine exactly when.
Various factory teams are called into action – car assembly, composite, structural engineering. A damaged insert, for example, needs to be pulled back to where it is meant to be and then patched up to make sure it is as strong as it was before, while trying to avoid adding weight. More glue equals more mass, as do extra panels to reinforce the structure.
The damaged Albon chassis after Melbourne was repaired with a fix that added around 100 grams, and most of that was glue.
The damaged Albon chassis after Melbourne was repaired with a fix that added around 100 grams, and most of that was glue.
You'd be surprised how much we can turn what looks like a horrible mess of carbon into something actually quite usable.
James Vowles
, Williams team principal
What can be salvaged?
Re-using parts is key to keeping costs down, while teams also have an eye on the environmental impact of producing new parts and shipping them around the world.
What can be repaired or recycled depends on the components in question and the extent of the damage. Williams team principal Vowles says: “You'd be surprised how much we can turn what looks like a horrible mess of carbon into something actually quite usable.”
For example, if the back of the diffuser side of the floor is broken, but the rest is usable, the back end can be cut off to have a new section bonded back on. If the floor is damaged at the front, a repair is still possible.
Repairs have to be done carefully, and the part will still be put into a jig to ensure everything is within a millimetre of where it’s meant to be. This can be achieved as long as the part in question isn’t completely scrap – a floor with a big hole in it cannot be repurposed.
If too much force is applied to metal, the material is either wasted or recycled
Suspension pieces are more difficult to repair as carbon elements are usually completely destroyed in a crash, due to how thin they are. There might be some metal inserts that can be carried over, as long as aforementioned loading checks indicate they have not been subjected to too much force.
Metal gets fatigued, so if too much force is put through it, it's fundamentally waste.
Metals that can be recycled will be, but that’s not always possible. F1 produces metal components in a unique way, machining the raw material into specific shapes. A sheet or block of metal that has been cut away in the process of milling, grinding, or turning, will fundamentally be weakened. Melting it down and turning it into another useable piece of metal isn’t simple as the end product might not be strong enough to be used in manufacturing.
Handing damaged and unsalvageable items over to recycling centres is the course of action that F1 teams will prefer.
If a part hasn’t been put under overly strenuous loads and can be repaired enough to be reused, F1 teams will choose this route for cost and sustainability reasons.
Unfortunately for Williams, Logan Sargeant bowed out of the Miami Grand Prix prematurely after an accident with Haas's Kevin Magnussen, and the team suffered a double retirement in the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix – adding even more work for the team trackside and back at the factory.
Unfortunately for Williams, Logan Sargeant bowed out of the Miami Grand Prix prematurely after an accident with Haas's Kevin Magnussen, and the team suffered a double retirement in the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix – adding even more work for the team trackside and back at the factory.