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<\/p>\nWilliams had a peculiar Friday at the United States Grand Prix as it ended practice with its fastest Formula 1 car slower than Cadillac and the other 8.1 seconds off the pace.<\/p>\n
Alex Albon was an exaggerated slowest in FP2 (just as he was in FP1) but the team’s real pace was still disappointing, with Carlos Sainz even behind Valtteri Bottas’s Cadillac.<\/p>\n
A track-limits deletion was behind Albon’s particularly unusual deficit and the strangest Friday of 2026 was partly down to Williams sacrificing typical in-weekend work for 2027 development help in FP1.<\/p>\n
This meant aero testing on hards in FP1 followed by a short medium-tyre run, as Williams chief trackside engineer Paul Williams said the team had “balanced off performance for this weekend versus long-term learning” because “this track’s very good for aero data collection”.<\/p>\n
Sainz said: “We decided to invest FP1 on a track that we knew we were going to be weak [on] to understand how to basically map the car in order to learn from this year’s car as much as possible for next year’s car.<\/p>\n
“We know we have a lot of weaknesses on this year’s car on a track like this and we want to make sure we understand it and we map it to try and get it right next year in the windtunnel.”<\/p>\n
Then the focus in FP2 was a more standard Friday plan just with a heavier emphasis on high-fuel running as Williams knows its one-lap pace is likely to be lacking anyway – although its long-run pace looked weak in the midfield too.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Circuit of the Americas is a punishing track as its layout comprises a mix of medium- and high-speed sweeps, long-duration corners, and bumpy heavy braking zones.<\/p>\n
This exposes a lot of Williams’s underlying weaknesses of recent years and the specific shortcomings of its 2026 car.<\/p>\n
In FP2, shortly after Sainz complained the car was a mess and he had no confidence in the rear, Albon reported zero confidence under braking.<\/p>\n
“When you have no downforce you’re going to suffer either on braking or on high speed,” said Sainz.<\/p>\n
“We know this year we lack a lot of downforce in the car and especially when it gets bumpy, when it gets high speed, when it gets hot, when it gets windy – like it gets in COTA – the only thing that saves you is downforce and that’s what we don’t have on this year’s car.<\/p>\n
“So we’re working on it, we are braced for a tough weekend, don’t expect any miracles, but at least we are investing in learning as much as possible for next year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Williams had a peculiar Friday at the United States Grand Prix as it ended practice with its fastest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":938735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-938734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/938735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}