Williams team principal James Vowles has praised the Grove outfit’s relentless factory effort to deliver a major upgrade package for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, despite the team only walking away with one point from the weekend.
Williams arrived at the Baku City Circuit with a substantial update, which included two new chassis, an extensive weight-saving programme and a revised aerodynamic set-up.
“First and foremost, thank you to everyone who has been working diligently day and night to achieve the update that we brought here this weekend,” Vowles explained in an Instagram video.
“It’s no mean feat to bring two new chassis, take a large amount of weight out of a package, and an aerodynamic update at the same time, deliver all of that to Baku.
“And we started speaking about this a few months ago, but it’s really fantastic to see it delivered here this weekend.”
The upgraded package showed promise in qualifying with Carlos Sainz progressing to Q3, but the grand prix proved more challenging. Sainz managed to score one point with a 10th-place finish, although at the time of writing, he is under investigation for an alleged practice start infringement. His team-mate Alex Albon crashed on lap 31.
“You can see in qualifying, we’re able to achieve a good result, but the race was really up and down, and at certain points, with Carlos, for example, we really couldn’t find the performance that was there in qualifying,” Vowles continued.
“I think we have some direction on that already, but well done to Carlos for fighting to the very end, for that point.
“With Alex, it’s a real shame. He was driving incredibly well. A gust of wind fundamentally meant that he was unable to slow the countdown sufficiently and went into the wall. And that is just a factor of Baku, it’s a street circuit, and these sorts of elements get punished quite hard.
“We’ll get that car rebuilt for Malaysia, which is taking place [next week]. [Baku was] the first of a triple-header. But as I say, really solid start, but we have work to do.”
