Williams F1 Endures Imola Learning Curve with FW46

Williams F1 faced a challenging race at Imola, with Sargeant caught in a DRS train and Albon hampered by a pit stop error.

It was a Grand Prix that started poorly for Williams F1 after yesterday’s qualifying, and today’s race at Imola confirmed it with a 17th place for Logan Sargeant and a retirement for Alex Albon, who suffered from a loose wheel due to a pit stop error by his team.

“This is not the race result we wanted today. Alex’s race ended after a problem with his front right wheel during his first pit stop,” commented Sven Smeets, sporting director.

“After serving his penalty, we used the remainder of his race as a learning opportunity for next year and decided to retire the car before the end of the race.”

“Logan’s stint on hard tires was challenging as he was mostly in a DRS train. After receiving many blue flags, he found some pace at the end of the race in clean air and managed to pass Bottas.”

“We will now focus immediately on Monaco and on reducing the car’s weight for the upcoming races.”

Logan Sargeant admitted, “today was a bit tough.”

“There are very few overtakes here, and we get stuck in DRS trains, with a lot of dirty air making it hard to keep the tires in good condition. I had many blue flags in the second stint. When you look at the windows we had for clean air, the performance wasn’t bad compared to the people around us, so that was positive. I don’t have much to say about the race except that I tried to keep my driving clean and string together the best laps possible.”

Alex Albon concluded: “after the issues with the wheel, we used the race as a sort of test session to experiment with brakes over long stints, playing around in those conditions.”

“I didn’t feel the problem coming out of the pits, it was only when I took off the pit limiter and felt the vibration that I realized something was wrong. I knew the tire wouldn’t come off as it would only go to a certain point and stop, so it was still safe, but I understand why I received the penalty.”

“Even though today is a bit painful, not everything is bleak. We have a plan, and the midfield isn’t scoring a lot of points, so we aren’t losing too much ground and can still catch up.”

“This time last year, we had only one point and were in a similar position. Even though we don’t have significant upgrades coming and are focusing on reducing the car’s weight, we will still look to make minor improvements. We will learn what we can and focus on Monaco.”