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
 
Albon
 
Colapinto 

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."

Albon

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."

 
Smeets

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."

 
Colapinto
 
Albon
 

Track: Las Vegas Strip Circuit, USA         

Lap Length: 6.201 km
Pos Driver Team Times Grid
14 F Colapinto Williams Racing 75.172 (1:36.867) Pit Lane
DNF A Albon Williams Racing DNF 9
 
Colapinto
 

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Las Vegas GP: Missed opportunity for Williams Racing
Discussion started by Williams F1 , 24/11/2024 08:45
Williams F1
24/11/2024 08:45
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