James Vowles has conceded Williams Racing are having to sacrifice performance to make sure they can run a reliable F1 car following recent cooling issues for Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz.
Williams had a superb run from Australia to Monaco, scoring 54 points across the opening eight rounds as the FW47 was fast in pretty much all types of conditions and circuits.
However, things have gone a small bit south since then. The Grove-based squad have only scored five points across the last four rounds.
Alex Albon retired from the Canadian and Austrian Grands Prix with cooling issues, while Carlos Sainz could not push his Williams F1 machine to the maximum in Canada either. The Spaniard never started in Austria because of his rear brakes going up in flames.
In opening practice at Silverstone for the F1 British GP, Williams worked on solutions to try and solve the cooling problems. Albon and Sainz did long runs on the hard tyre in the first half of FP1.
James Vowles: Williams working on their F1 cooling issues with FW47
Speaking on the ‘Vowles Verdict‘, the Williams team principal explained they can now complete race distances. Unfortunately for them, it came at the cost of performance in Silverstone.
James Vowles outlined they are digging hard to try and have a complete solution soon to run their car at its maximum.
“We’ve obviously been hindered by this cooling issue that’s been there for a few races this year but probably more marked in the Austria retirement when we were running in a very strong position.
“We did a lot of work in FP1, you would assume a different programme really to most cars in order to get on top of it and we were doing something different between Alex and Carlos.
“Answering the question, we have solutions in place that mean we can get the car through the race but it’s at the cost of performance. And ideally what we’re looking for is containments that allow us to make sure we’re not throwing away anything in terms of performance going forward, and the team is working diligently on that as we speak.”
Significant late race damage at the F1 British GP for Carlos Sainz
Running right behind Charles Leclerc in the battle for P8, Carlos Sainz was left to rue a mistake from the Ferrari driver.
Defending into Stowe, the Monegasque driver lost the rear on a wet patch which pitched his car right in front of the Spaniard’s. It took them both out of points contention.
Along with a messed up front wing, Vowles revealed his driver also picked up floor damage.
“As you saw, unfortunately for Carlos when he was running in a strong position, he was hit by Charles who had a snap effectively coming through Stowe corner.
“The damage was extensive, it was front wing and floor, and the losses probably around about half a second per lap. So, sufficient that he was out of contention for any points on that particular day.”
