Alexander Albon’s heavy crash after striking a groundhog in Canada will hamper Williams’s car development, team principal James Vowles has said.
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The incident happened when Albon ran over the animal during opening practice at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Losing grip after the impact, he slid into a barrier and caused substantial damage to the left side of his FW48.
“That hit on Friday was a very, very expensive hit,” Vowles said in a team video. “It took out the floor, the front wing, the rear wing, some elements of the gearbox, some elements of 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, and Vowles noted that setbacks like the Canada crash will slow the introduction of lighter parts and other upgrades.
“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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Beyond delaying development, the crash forced Williams to prioritise spare parts for upcoming races.
“We have a development cycle for some of those car components going forward,” Vowles said. “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 also protecting a notable upgrade planned for 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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