Williams’ double nightmare at the Dutch GP

Williams suffered a double nightmare at Zandvoort, with Logan Sargeant’s big accident on Saturday morning destroying the newly updated FW46 followed by Alex Albon being excluded from qualifying, losing his excellent eighth-place grid slot and being obliged to start from the back. The exclusion was for the car’s new floor being found to be 0.3mm oversize at the front.

Team principal James Vowles explained afterwards what had happened. “We use scanning techniques now rather than physical measuring techniques because it’s not just one point that you have to be aware of, but it’s heights and widths all across some quite complex shapes.

“Before we come here, we have scanned the floor and the car multiple times. It happened back at the factory in isolation with the floor, it happened back at the factory on the car, it happened here on Thursday as well. And we did demonstrate all of these results to the FIA which indicate that our floor was within the legal compliance. But what matters is the adjudication of the FIA, their measurements and their systems, and that we entirely accept.

“What we now need to do is understand how we could have been wrong in our own measurements and what we need to change in terms of process with immediate effect. There’s only one area of the car that we were not compliant with and it’s an easy fix, but irrespective the rule is the rule and it’s black and white in that regard. We cannot spend hours of work developing an update kit, we cannot ask our drivers to put everything on the line in order to secure points-scoring positions to then throw it away with not being completely there on every single boundary of the regulation and there’s no one really accountable for that but ourselves, that’s on our shoulders.”

The floor was legalised to within the stipulated 1600mm by use of sandpaper. Albon finished 14th from the back of the grid.