Franco Colapinto has revealed his Williams Formula 1 car will be without the team’s latest updates at the Qatar Grand Prix due to his crash in Las Vegas last weekend.
Colapinto was attempting to progress into the last stage of qualifying one week ago when he clattered into the barrier and caused vast damage to the Williams FW46.
The Argentine’s shunt was his third in two weekends having sustained various impacts in Brazil, an outing which saw team-mate Alex Albon also endure a huge crash.
Those incidents in Sao Paulo had put Williams under immense strain during the three-week break between the two races to ensure that both cars could race in Vegas.
But although a herculean effort saw the two drivers run the latest hardware last time out, Colapinto’s incident means he will be without the newest parts this weekend.
“Of course, it’s not the ideal how we are coming [into the weekend],” Colapinto admitted to media including Motorsport Week.
“After being already low in spares in Vegas here, we are going to be struggling a bit more with that.
“My car is not going to be in the last spec, so that’s already a point where you don’t want to start like that already the weekend.
“But it’s part of it. So we are going to have to deal with that, having the old upgrades in the car.
“We are going to see how it goes. We are going to try to understand again quick the car.
“What it does, what we need from these different suspensions. But we are going to try to maximise what we have.”
Asked whether that was because there aren’t enough spare parts, Colapinto replied: “Yeah, there aren’t enough parts.
“It’s part of the crashes we have in the last few races. We’ll see how it goes here.
He added: “We are changing the front suspension. It’s different. So that’s the old spec and some other things.
“But that’s what it is. We have to deal with that and try to do our best to maximise the car.”
Williams precarious position
Colapinto has admitted that Williams’ desperate need to accrue points to climb up the pecking order contributed to the accident that consigned him to a pit lane start.
The Grove-based squad languishes down in ninth place in the Constructors’ Championship, a substantial 29 points behind eighth-placed RB with two races remaining.
“We are trying to be aggressive and pushing the limits,” he explained. “We are at a point that we need to be scoring points. And we are going for it of course.
“Qualifying is a moment that you need to go for it. Unfortunately, it was a bit too much.”
Colapinto encouraged by Williams pace
Nonetheless, Colapinto derived encouragement from the promising pace that he was able to show either side of his crash as he targets a smoother weekend in Qatar.
“It was tough, as you saw,” he recalled. “It was not a good weekend for the team.
“I think on my side I still take many positives. Our quali pace was really good. It was very tough but the pace was looking really good.
“The car was very strong, so that was positive. At the end, the end result was not what we were expecting.
“But I think, again, pacing the race, on the Mediums, I was the strongest one. So that showed that we were recovering from a tough qualifying.
“I think things could have gone a little bit more our way on Sunday. Maybe we could have been closer to points.
“Our first thing was we lost a lot of time on traffic. We lost a lot of time with difficult boxing.
“Then I think our race was… Yeah, it came to a little bit of a difficult situation where strategy was difficult to manage.
“But we bounced back stronger here. It’s another weekend reset, so we are OK.”
READ MORE – Franco Colapinto suffered 50G impact in Las Vegas F1 qualifying crash
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