It was a difficult start to the season for the Atlassian Williams F1 Team, with reliability issues leaving only one car able to take part in qualifying at Albert Park.
The day began with frustration when Carlos Sainz’s FW48 lost power at the end of his first lap in FP3, stopping at pit entry and unable to continue. That left Alex Albon as the team’s sole representative in final practice, where he finished P17. Despite the crew’s best efforts, Carlos was unable to return for qualifying, sidelined by the earlier issue.
Alex carried the team’s hopes into qualifying. He fought through an interrupted Q1, setting a best lap of 1:21.051 to place P13 and progress to Q2. But with the FW48 struggling to break into the top 10 all weekend, Q3 was always going to be a stretch. His provisional 1:20.941 left him P15, and a trip across the grass at Turn 1 on his final attempt ended any chance of improvement. That means Williams will line up P15 with Alex and P21 with Carlos for Sunday’s race.
The Team Reflects
James Vowles, Team Principal:
“We haven’t had a clean weekend at all, with only one car competing in qualifying following some power unit reliability issues. We know we are on the back foot, and our winter has been difficult, but we have a clear understanding of where we need to improve – and fast – and there are already programmes under way to achieve those goals. Our plan for tomorrow is to get both cars to the finish so we can build on the learning we have here and take it into Shanghai next weekend. Congratulations to Mercedes on the P1 and P2 today – that’s the benchmark, and it gives us something to aim for.”
Alex Albon:
“We maximized as much as we could today after we’ve struggled with some reliability issues this weekend. We were limited in some practice sessions, so to make it into Q2 was a decent result. There is a lot of work to do and it’s not an overnight fix, but we’ll keep pushing and look to solve the reliability issues and limitations we’ve identified. For tomorrow I think we can expect some chaos, especially at the start, and not many teams have been able to do proper long runs due to red flags across the weekend, so it could be interesting. From our position we want a little bit of chaos, and we’ll look to keep it clean and take advantage of any opportunities in the race.”
Carlos Sainz:
“It’s been a very difficult weekend filled with reliability issues across each of the sessions. It’s unfortunate because we seemed to have no issues during both tests, so to come here and only do FP1 and the beginning of FP2, ultimately missing both sessions today, is frustrating. Hopefully tomorrow we can go racing and gather some experience and good learnings, as we’re already on the back foot.”