Williams boss James Vowles has rued its qualifying issues in this year’s Formula 1 season, admitting it is an area the team is not getting “quite right yet”.
The Grove-based squad began last week’s Italian Grand Prix weekend in fine fettle, with Carlos Sainz third in both Friday’s free practice sessions.
It appeared there was genuine one-lap pace to give both Sainz and team-mate Alex Albon a platform to enter qualifying with warranted confidence.
But the team’s continuing problem with a narrow window of optimisation on the FW47’s tyres saw both drivers knocked out of Q2, leaving them to start in 13th and 14th places.
It did not stop Albon from completing an impressive drive, which saw him finish seventh, eight seconds ahead of Gabriel Bortoleto’s Sauber.
Sainz looked set for a ninth-place finish, but an incident with Oliver Bearman’s Haas at the Variante della Roggia chicane saw his race ruined, finishing 11th.
But Albon’s points see Williams solidify fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship with 86 points, 24 ahead of Aston Martin, which failed to score at Monza.
Speaking on Williams’ in-house YouTube debrief, Vowles described the weekend as “fantastic” but also acknowledged that qualifying proved to be a barrier to a higher finish.
“Fantastic weekend overall. Alex scores six valuable points that are really going to make the difference against our rivals,” he said.
“You can see how close this championship is and it will remain that way for the further eight rounds we have remaining.”
“There’s a however, there’s a but. We don’t have two cars in the points.
“Carlos did brilliantly in terms of qualifying, his pace was there, but we got caught up in an incident and it meant he wasn’t able to score points for the team and yet a ninth place was very much on the table for him in that circumstance.”
Vowles addresses Williams qualifying anomaly
Vowles moved focus onto the continuing qualifying issue, which was exacerbated at Monza down to the tightness of the field and the small differences in laptime between Q2 and Q3.
“The second, however, is we as a team are not getting qualifying just quite right yet,” he continued.
“We’re on the limit of getting the tyres working and with a field that’s as tight as it was in Monza and, for clarity, that’s now the closest grid we’ve had in Formula 1.
“I think about 8 tenths separating 20 cars or in the case of our two cars, 90 milliseconds separating whether you’re in Q3 or whether you’re 14th. You have to get every detail right.”
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