Williams boss says he still has faith in benched Sargeant

Williams boss James Vowles says he still believes in Logan Sargeant despite putting Alex Albon in the American's car for the Australian Grand Prix.

With Williams only bringing one chassis to Melbourne, Albon drove in Sargeant's carin qualifying on Saturday and will do so again in Sunday's race after wrecking his own in practice at Albert Park.

Albon qualified 12th but the England-born Thai faces an uphill battle to secure Williams's first points for the season with a top-10 finish on Sunday.

Sargeant scored one point in his rookie season last year with Albon scoring 27, which lifted Williams to seventh overall in the constructors' championship.

Vowles told reporters on Saturday that Sargeant, 23, was disappointed but had taken the blow with maturity.

"He took it with far more maturity than I would have done at his age and, in fact, more so than that, his response after a considered moment was one more of, ‘How do I help, how do I move forward with the team?', fundamentally," Vowles said.

"You will always question yourself in all of these (situations). But all I did is lay out the facts to him (that) he has improved, he is closer to Alex than before, but he’s not quite at the leading edge and in front of Alex," Vowles added.

Motor racing pundits said the driver swap-out underlined a lack of faith in Sargeant but Vowles said he still backed the American to improve.

"In the case of Logan, I haven’t changed my mind. I’ve signed him and I’ve put my full weight behind him because I believe in him," he said.

"If you look at his results this year, he’s been within milliseconds of Alex. The gap (between them) has closed down as I expected it to, but in the circumstance he’s not quite on the leading edge."

Albon will race on Sunday in the knowledge that another shunt could prove disastrous for Williams's hopes of development ahead of the next race in Japan.

"It was a different feeling, if I'm honest. I haven't had this feeling," Albon said of racing Sargeant's car.

"The best payback I could give to the team and to him was to try and do a good job today and tomorrow.

"Obviously the atmosphere and the environment that we're in is not pleasant, we don't want it to happen again."