Alexander Albon’s heavy crash after striking a groundhog in Canada will affect Williams’s efforts to develop its car, says team principal James Vowles.
The team had to make extensive repairs to Albon’s car after he ran over the animal during the opening practice session at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. The loss of grip sent Albon into a barrier and caused extensive damage to the left-hand side of his FW48.
“That hit on Friday was a very, very expensive hit,” said Vowles in a video released by the team. “It took out the floor, the front wing, the rear wing, some elements of the gearbox, some elements the power unit as well at the same time.
“So it was expensive in that regard and obviously we’re all constrained by a cost cap.”
Williams began the season with an overweight chassis. Vowles said incidents like the damage suffered in Canada will delay efforts to bring lighter parts and other performance improvements.
“When you are constrained by a cost cap, you simply can’t bring the updates at the rate that you want them to,” he explained. “You can’t take the weight off the car, in our case, at the rate that we’d like to as well.
“These sort of events, especially when they’re as significant as what happened at the weekend, really do set you back.”
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In addition to their development objectives the team has to ensure it has sufficient stock of spare parts for upcoming races.
“We have a development cycle for some of those car components going forward,” said Vowles. “There’s a front wing, for example, coming. There’s a floor development, which we’ll look at for later.
“Now what we’ve had to do, as an impact to all of that, is make sure we prioritise having sufficient stock levels for Monaco. Because whatever happens, we’re about to go into probably the hardest track in terms of attrition, and you simply can’t get away with having the cars built up with no spares around you. That’s where we need to put ourselves in a strong position for Monaco.”
The team is especially keen to bring what Vowles called an “interesting” upgrade to its car after the summer break.
“In addition what we’re doing at the moment is running three different parallel programmes. One is making sure we’re at the right point on spares in terms of Monaco.
“The second is we have various updates running, making sure that those are as protected as possible and still deliver on their due course and timeline. The third is that we have an interesting development for later on post-August, and we just want to make sure we protect that as well at the same time.”
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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 – when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring journalist, Keith began running the site full-time in 2010, achieving a long-held ambition to dedicate his full attention to his passion for motor racing. View all posts by Keith Collantine