Williams fined €5,000 for engine cooler blunder on Albon’s car in qualifying · RaceFans

Williams have been fined €5,000 (£4,200) for sending Alexander Albon’s car onto the track with an airbox cooler attached to it during qualifying.

The incident cost Albon his only chance to set a lap time on a fresh set of soft tyres in Q3.

Once Albon was made aware the fan was still in place, he stopped at the pit lane exit and removed it. The stewards accepted Williams’ explanation that this course of action meant they did not interfere with other drivers’ runs.

“The car was stopped at the first opportunity, at the pit exit, and subsequently the driver removed the fan and threw it overboard where it was subsequently retrieved by a marshal,” the stewards noted. “Albon [then] drove away and entered the pits without setting an additional time.

“The general expectation when released in an unsafe condition is to simply stop at the next safe location. Throwing parts overboard, requiring a marshal to retrieve them is not normal. However, in this case the actions of the team and driver prevented the qualifying runs of any other driver from being affected, as a yellow flag would have had to be shown if the car had remained where it was, or had driven to a run-off, and in this unique case, throwing the part overboard avoided the yellow flag. As was discussed in the hearing, this turns out to be the ‘least worst option.’

“Had any of these actions affected other competitors, or created a further unsafe situation the stewards would have taken further action. However, in this case we impose the usual penalty for a release in an unsafe condition of €5,000.”

Williams team principal James Vowles said the error occurred because the team was rushing to get Albon’s car onto the track in time to have an advantageous running position in Q3.

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“There was a number of cars as we exited, trying to get out of the garage into the pit lane that were coming towards us,” he said in a video released by the team. “So there was a responsibility for the mechanic in front, trying to make sure that Alex exited cleanly into that line of traffic without causing an accident.

“As a result of that, with the attention really being more on traffic coming down the pit lane, it was missed that the fan was unable to be removed in the time available and went down the pit lane.”

Vowles pointed out the team had not forgotten to remove the cooler, but the mechanic whose responsibility it was to remove it was unable to do so.

“Clearly we can’t and we won’t have that happen again in the future. It’s not, as I said, that physically someone just left it in place. It’s that in that rushed moment we didn’t do the best job we could with it.”

A video released by Williams shows the mechanic struggling to remove the cooler before Albon’s car was released from the garage, narrowly missing him as it did so.

A Williams mechanic was extremely fortunate to avoid being hit by @alex_albon‘s car when it was released from their garage with an airbox cooler still in place during qualifying.#F1 #AzerbaijanGP #RaceFans pic.twitter.com/eRQcZgpTKk

— RaceFans (@racefansdotnet) September 14, 2024