Qatar GP: Tough race for Williams Racing.


By Williams Racing
October 11 2023

Coming off the positive points scoring result from the Saturday Sprint the Williams Racing Team went into Sunday's race with a degree of optimism. But the events of the race showed that their optimism was not well founded. The early stages of the race would see both Alex and Logan running just outside the top ten with both having started on the medium. But with the first series of pit stops both Alex and Logan would seem to drop back and as the race went on their positions became poorer. Added onto this was the extreme nature of the heat and humidity that every driver was subject to. Such was the impact of this that Logan would be forced to retire after suffering severe dehydration. He would have to be helped from his car. Despite making it to the finish Alex would also be required to get help to get out of his car such was the impact of the heat on him. Thankfully both drivers would make a complete recovery. Alex would finish 13th.

 
  Williams Racing Qatar GP Race Review
 
Sargeant
 
Sargeant 

Logan Sargeant:
"The main thing is Alex and I are both ok. I’ve been feeling unwell all week which didn’t help with the dehydration in this heat. The last thing I wanted to do was retire the car, but I had to put my health first. Sorry to the team for not being able to reach the finish line. They’ve done an incredible job all weekend in these intense conditions. I’ll be taking next week to fully recover and then bounce back in Austin which I’m really looking forward to."

 
Albon

Alex Albon:
"Firstly, I’m glad Logan is okay as it’s never easy to retire from a race. I think this race goes down as one of the toughest of the year, as I suffered with heat exposure myself. Our pace was pretty strong, but I need to review what happened, as we were in what felt like a good position, but we ended up falling out of the points. We also struggled with a bit of an overheating cockpit, so we’ll also need to review this. The gap to our competitors is closing, so it’s a tough weekend to walk away from but we’ll review the data and see what happened."

Robson

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance:
"
Despite the evening race, it was hot and humid, nonetheless. Racing in these conditions at this high-speed circuit is very physical for the drivers and led to them both ending the race dehydrated.

Given the build-up to the race and our performance in the Sprint Race yesterday, we were probably expecting a little bit more today, but we were never quite able to find Alex the free air he needed to make really good progress. Being held-up by Hulkenberg early in the race after he started in the wrong grid position did not help us in this regard.

Logan has driven very well all weekend and shown good pace, especially in the tricky conditions we had on Friday. It was a shame that we didn’t get to see his full pace today after he was forced to retire.

We now look forward to the triple header, which begins in Austin before we move onto Mexico and Brazil."

 

Albon

 
Sargeant
 

Track: Lusail International Circuit, Qatar    

Lap Length: 5.419 km
Pos Driver  Team Time/Gap (Fastest Lap) Grid
13 A ALBON Williams Racing +91.014 (1:26.666) 13
DNF L SARGEANT Williams Racing DNF (1:27.983) 15
 
Albon
 

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