Logan Sargeant could be forced to sit out the Australian Grand Prix after team-mate Alex Albon smashed up his car in Friday practice.
A huge crash in FP1 saw the British-Thai racer cause damage to the chassis of his Williams. And the team does not have a spare on site, which potentially complicates matter for the rest of the weekend.
The team is assessing whether the damage is repairable overnight. If not, team principal James Vowles will have a huge decision to make as he faces the possibility of only being able to run one car for the rest of the weekend.
He admitted the car may not be fixable in time for qualifying and said: "It was a fairly big accident. The engine is damaged, the gearbox is split in two, and the chassis is damaged.
"It's the worst you could have ever had. We do not have a third chassis here, that's correct. So now it's just whether we can repair this one. We have repair kits, fundamentally of those I'm not yet sure, because it's a very serious accident and with what happened on the front [right] corner."
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Albon was uninjured in the crash and is available to continue if he has a car to drive. The 27-year-old is Williams' lead driver and Vowles admitted he would consider putting him in Sargeant's car if needed - which would sideline the American for the rest of the weekend.
He said: "One point here will make the difference between sixth and 10th potentially in the championship, simple as that. It just depends. I want to see how FP2 is, I want to see how the car performs. I want to see what options we have available to us on the chassis here as well."
Vowles also explained why his team had taken the risk of not transporting a third chassis to Melbourne for this event, adding: "We have been very open and transparent that we were pushing everything to the absolute limit across the winter to get where we are, and sacrifices had to be made.
"And one of the sacrifices, which is a risk that you take, is you bring a spare hopefully to round about round three. It pushed just away from that. And so what you're doing is suggesting that for this first part of the season, you can't have a major accident. And it has not paid off in these circumstances."
If Albon does drive Sargeant's car in qualifying and the race, the team will need to fit engine parts and a gearbox from the London-born racer's pool for the season.
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