Williams confirm Albon’s new floor was ‘too wide’ and they have ‘easy fix’ · RaceFans

Williams have confirmed Alexander Albon was disqualified from yesterday’s qualifying session because his car’s floor was found to be too wide.

Albon lost his best qualifying position of the year so far after his updated FW46 failed a post-session compliance check. “We were disqualified for a floor that was too wide,” said team principal James Vowles.

Williams introduced an extensive update to its car this weekend including a revised floor. Vowles said the team believed the design complied with the rules before they brought it to the track, but accepted the findings of the FIA after the parts were scanned at the track after qualifying.

“It’s not the first time they’ve been scanned,” said Vowles. “We’ve obviously been following and complying to all of these procedures since they bought into place several years ago, and haven’t been found in excess until now.

“We use scanning techniques now rather than physical measuring techniques, because it’s not just one point that you have to be aware of, it’s heights and widths all across some quite complex shapes.

“Before we came here, we 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 is within the legal compliance.

“But what matters is the adjudication of the FIA, their measurements and their systems, and that we entirely accept.”

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Vowles foresees no difficulty making the floor compliant and said the team will quickly turn its attention to why it fell foul of the rules.

“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,” he said. “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.

“There’s no one really accountable for that but ourselves. That’s on our shoulders. No one else outside of that has any responsibility. We need to address and get on top of that with immediate effect.”

Despite the car’s disqualification, Vowles drew encouragement from Albon’s performance as he lapped within a tenth of a second of the quickest Ferrari and Aston Martin in qualifying.

“The performance of the car was positive,” said Vowles. “We’re in a situation where the update is now producing good results and, in a very tight midfield, we’re able to put the car back into that qualifying three position, back into a points-scoring position for the race today.

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“That’s also mirrored by a long run on Friday that, again, was positive. It had pulled clear of the midfield and we were in a situation in fact, at times, where our long run was overlaying with Ferrari, which is a very different situation to what we’ve been to the beginning of a season.”

He believes the upgrade puts the team in strong shape for the rest of the season. “Beyond this race weekend – where I feel we have a strong enough car to be able to fight through the field – I’m excited by the prospects of today because the car remains quick and we have opportunity in the race.

“Beyond here we have nine more races where we have to deliver, time and time again, with perfection, in order to score points and fight our way up the championship. This isn’t the standard I want us to hold ourselves to this weekend, but let’s now make it a process change to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”