Williams has confirmed that Alexander Albon was disqualified from yesterday’s qualifying because the floor of his car was 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 because the floor was too wide,” said team boss James Vowles.

Williams unveiled a major update to its car this weekend, including a revised underbody. Vowles said the team assumed the design complied with the rules before taking it to the track, but accepted the FIA’s findings after the parts were scanned on track after qualifying.

“It’s not the first time they’ve been scanned,” Vowles said. “We’ve obviously been following and adhering to all of these procedures since they were introduced several years ago and no violations have been identified to date.”

“We now use scanning techniques instead of physical measurement methods because you have to consider not just one point, but heights and widths across some quite complex shapes.

“Before we came here, we scanned the underbody and the car several times. That already happened in the factory, isolated from the underbody, that already happened in the factory on the car. That also happened here on Thursday. And we presented all these results to the FIA, which show that our underbody complies with the legal requirements.

“But what counts is the FIA’s decision, its measurements and its systems, and we fully accept that.”

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Vowles expects there will be no difficulty in bringing the surface into compliance and said the team will quickly address why they broke the rules.

“We now need to understand how we could have been wrong in our own measurements and what we need to change immediately in terms of process,” he said. “There is only one area of ​​the car where we did not comply with the regulations and that is easily fixed.”

“But regardless, the rule is the rule and in this respect it is black and white. We cannot spend hours developing an update kit, we cannot ask our drivers to put everything on the line to secure points positions, only to lose it because they have not fully complied with every single limit of the regulation.

“There is no one else who is really responsible for this except ourselves. This is on our shoulders. No one else has any responsibility. We need to address this immediately and get it under control.”

Despite the car’s disqualification, Albon’s performance was encouraging for Vowles as he finished within a tenth of a second of the fastest Ferraris and Aston Martins in qualifying.

“The performance of the car has been positive,” said Vowles. “We are in a situation where the update is now producing good results and in a very tight midfield we can get the car back to third place in qualifying, back into a points position for today’s race.”

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“This is also reflected in a long run on Friday, which was again positive. We had distanced ourselves from the midfield and were at times in a situation where our long run outpaced Ferrari, which is a completely different situation to the start of a season.”

He is convinced that the upgrade puts the team in a strong position for the rest of the season. “After this race weekend – where I think we have a car that is strong enough to fight our way through the field – I am excited about the prospects for today because the car is still fast and we have a chance in the race.”

“On top of that, we still have nine more races to go where we need to keep delivering perfectly to score points and fight our way up the championship. That’s not the standard I want to hold myself to this weekend, but let’s make a process change now to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Pictures: Williams’ new floor for the Dutch Grand Prix

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Dutch Grand Prix 2024

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