Friday was a day of blended returns for Williams on the System 1 Mexico Metropolis Grand Prix. Franco Colapinto completed FP1 in eleventh place, and accomplished the prolonged FP2 — and a tire check program for Pirelli — with none incidents.
It was a special story for Alexander Albon.
A tough crash between Albon and Oliver Bearman introduced FP1 to an early finish for each drivers, and the harm Albon’s FW46 sustained within the shunt prevented the veteran driver from collaborating in FP2. Consequently, the crew will probably be trying to make up for misplaced time in Saturday’s remaining apply session forward of qualifying.
A day of blended emotions,” started Williams Sporting Director Sven Smoots within the crew’s post-seassion report. “We accomplished this system with Franco in FP1 gathering beneficial data for tomorrow and Sunday. Sadly, Alex caught a slow-moving Bearman in an unlucky spot on the monitor with restricted choices to keep away from a collision.
“Intensive repairs had been wanted, and the crew gave it their all to restore the automotive in time for FP2. We got here very shut however wanted a number of extra minutes to provide Alex a few laps on the finish of FP2. Franco accomplished the Pirelli tire check program in FP2 with none issues. Tomorrow we will probably be focussing on giving Alex as a lot run time as we will whereas with Franco, we will probably be trying to collect very important information for remaining set-up choices.”
The incident between Albon and Bearman was referred to race officers for additional investigation, however no additional motion was taken.
You’ll be able to see the incident right here:
“It was a irritating day immediately. We now have lots of work to do tomorrow however I’m hoping we’re not too far behind given FP2 was a Pirelli check, so hopefully the shortage of monitor time immediately is much less compromising,” mentioned Albon. “Relating to the incident, I believe Ollie obtained advised that I used to be behind him too late and tried his greatest to hurry up into the high-speed corners, however I simply caught him on the worst a part of the monitor and there wasn’t a lot I may’ve carried out to keep away from it. We’ll put it behind us as a racing incident and hopefully flip issues round for tomorrow.”
On the opposite aspect of the storage, Colapinto known as Friday a “good first day” after his two apply periods.
“It’s been first day right here in Mexico. We made some modifications between periods nevertheless the automotive felt a bit of bit much less alive, so we’ll take a look at that tonight,” mentioned Colapinto. “General, the important thing immediately was to get used to the monitor and rise up to hurry which went properly. We’re getting in the precise path, so we’ll hold constructing tomorrow.”
