Las Vegas GP: Missed opportunity for Williams Racing
By Williams Racing
November 24 2024
Coming off a difficult qualifying for the 2024 Las Vegas GP the Williams Team was able to recover for the race by rebuilding Franco Colapointo's damaged car as well as seeing him receive a medical clearance to race. Franco would be required to start from the pit lane and after the opening laps things looked quite promising for Alex Albon as he was inside the top ten and Franco making progress up the field. But it would take a turn for the worse when Alex would be forced to retire with an overheating issue and Franco would make an early pit stop while on the hard tyre seeing him drop well down the field. Franco was able to finish the race in 14th and for Alex it was a missed opportunity with his DNF. Not the weekend the team was hoping for but it was promising as Alex did have good pace.
Williams Racing
Las Vegas Grand Prix Race
Franco Colapinto:
"It was a tough weekend. Qualifying yesterday was feeling very
good, and I was getting more and more comfortable but then I started the
lap too close to Gasly, had a very messy last corner and unfortunately
finished with a lot of damage. From where we started in the pit lane
today, we were able to make some progress and, overall, did a good job.
It was difficult to manage the tyres as we had a lot of graining. I must
say a huge thank you to the garage team, who have been the heroes of the
last couple of races. They had to rebuild a whole car yesterday for me
to race today and it’s amazing how good they are. They are the best out
there and I’m very grateful. We know more opportunities are coming next
week in Qatar and we will bounce back."
Alex Albon:
"We had a good car today and could’ve scored some good points, so
it’s frustrating to retire with a suspected PU issue. We need to
understand whether it was a similar problem to FP2 or the same issue we
had in Singapore, but we’ll go away and try to get to the bottom of it.
We’ve experienced some hard times this year, so we have to stay strong.
From my side, these things happen but I wanted a good result for the
team to try to repay everyone for the hard work they’ve put in during
these really tough times. It wasn’t meant to be, so we’ll try to put our
focus on the last two races of the season and hopefully, we can turn
things around."
Sven Smeets Sporting Director:
"Firstly, it was a fantastic
job by the team in the garage again to get Franco’s car ready to race
and I want to thank each and every one of them for their determination
and hard work. Both cars were running well at the start of the race but
frustratingly we had to retire Alex’s car, despite points being on the
table. We will go away and investigate what caused the PU problem.
Franco put in a decent recovery drive, but we couldn’t make it into the
top 10 having started from the pit lane. We now look forward to Qatar
where the Sprint format will give us two chances to score points."
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