“Should Have Pulled You by the Shirt”: James Vowles ‘Regrets’ Celebrating With Albon and Colapinto After Azerbaijan GP

Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto sat with their team principal James Vowles for the Team Torque podcast’s last episode of the year. The trio reviewed Williams’ rollercoaster of a season and discussed some of the tense and fun moments from 2024.

Albon steered the conversation into discussing any one moment of the season they would have liked to change. Colapinto and Albon spoke about one of the major crashes they had. While Vowles differed in his answer and recalled the Azerbaijan GP celebrations.

That was the race where both Albon and Colapinto scored points. And it was a huge haul of points when we consider Williams’ humble standards in 2024. The Thai driver finished P7 while the rookie Argentine followed him in eighth.

It certainly called for celebrations at the Williams garage and their mechanics were more than ready. One of them had a champagne bottle in his hands as they clicked a team photo.

As is the custom in the paddock, the drivers and the team bosses get a spray of the bubbly. Vowles regrets that he let Albon and Colapinto run away and he had to take the majority of the spray.

“I knew someone had a bottle of champagne and I was polite and you two went ahead. My mistake was, should have pulled you by the shirt and just got ahead of you,” the Williams boss jokingly said.

Albon mentioned that he had noticed that one of the mechanics was trying to be sly about hiding the champagne bottle and spraying it on them. So he was ready to run as soon as possible.

Colapinto also gave the same explanation. Evidently, Vowles could not match the reflexes and agility of his young drivers.

While Baku was a funny memory for the Williams drivers, Las Vegas and Sao Paulo weren’t.

Colapinto and Albon express regret about Las Vegas and Sao Paulo

The Las Vegas GP and Sao Paulo GP were the worst race weekends Williams endured this year. The amount of crash damage they had in Brazil was a major blow to a small, tight-budget team like them.

Colapinto and Albon both had a lot of crashes in the second half of the season. Ex-Williams driver Logan Sargeant bore the brunt of these crashes in the initial half.

The Argentine driver had replaced Sargeant as a reliable driver who won’t crash as often. But even he could not avoid some big shunts.

Colapinto said the Vegas qualifying crash was something he would have liked to change. In fact, he mentioned that despite his two crashes in Brazil — one of which reportedly cost over a million dollars — the Vegas qualifying shunt felt “much bigger” to him.

Meanwhile, Albon analyzed his Brazil qualifying crash. The #23 driver felt he had enough grip to extract more performance on the treacherous Interlagos track. But it all went horribly south as his car ended up in a crumpled state at the exit of turn 1.

Naturally, Albon would want to change that moment, as he could have qualified in the top five, and brought home a huge chunk of points in the race like how the Alpine duo managed. But instead, he ended up adding to his damage bill and the list of massive crashes he had in 2024, which has also ranked him higher up in the Destructors’ Championship.