Round-up: Williams ‘sent Albon too soon’, Bortoleto hit plastic bag and more

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The FW47 shines in Saudi (Williams)

James Vowles: ‘With Alex, we hold a responsibility towards the result. We were a little bit too early and gave him a clean lap but cost him the opportunity to get to Q3. It was just a few milliseconds that separated him from Q3 and that’s an effect you can get from air circulation and other cars going round.’

Saturday (Sauber)

Gabriel Bortoleto: ‘On my second attempt, I picked up a plastic bag, which forced me to pit so it could be removed. Then on the third attempt, I got a bit too optimistic with the tow from Max (Verstappen), missed the braking point, and ended up spinning.’

Charles from the second row, Lewis from the fourth (Ferrari)

Charles Leclerc: ‘I’m not pleased with P4. I am satisfied with my driving and I have understood how to maximise the car’s potential, but unfortunately, this is the most we can extract from it at the moment. We just don’t have enough grip to carry the kind of speed our competitors are carrying through certain corners, and we have to analyse that.’

Exciting qualifying nets P3 and P5 in Jeddah (Mercedes)

Andrew Shovlin, trackside engineering director: ‘Overall, we’re left with a sense we could have achieved a bit more but in many ways it’s a healthy sense of frustration. We’ve improved a long way since last year and we’ll keep pushing.’

Qualifying recap (Haas)

Ayao Komatsu: ‘Unfortunately we underperformed in qualifying, I don’t feel we maximised our potential. It’s actually quite tricky to get the performance out of the soft tires and I think as a team we’ve still got a lot to learn.’

Lindblad claims maiden F2 victory following Verschoor’s penalty in Jeddah (Formula 2)

‘The Briton crossed the line (second) but was promoted to the top spot after Richard Verschoor, who crossed the line in (first), was given a five-second penalty for forcing another driver off the track.’

Lloyd credits ‘massive step forward’ for propelling her to flawless Jeddah race one victory (F1 Academy)

It’s pretty good. Not from where I want it, I want it to be in the main race, not the reverse grid.

Six Hours of Imola qualifying (World Endurance Championship via YouTube)

Motegi race one (Super Formula via YouTube)

For the second day in a row a driver has received a formal warning for crossing the painted area before the pit entrance, in violation of the race director’s instructions, followed by a reprimand for doing the same on a later lap. Today it’s Jack Doohan, yesterday it was Liam Lawson.

#F1 #RaceFans

— RaceFans (@racefansdotnet.bsky.social) 19 April 2025 at 15:52

Frustrating session & a tough one to take, especially with the potential we’ve got in the car. We go again tomorrow.

— Alex Albon (@alex_albon) April 19, 2025

Does anyone else get the feeling that F1 are showing anything, literally anything, other than Hamilton on track.. Hamilton’s starting a lap after a struggling session.. let’s see how it’s going.. no… let’s watch Bortoletto.. or Piastri onboard on an in-lap. Been all season

— Stefan Wilson (@stef_wilson) April 19, 2025

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