Williams team principal James Vowles has admitted the team is not extracting the full potential of its FW47 due to the persistent cooling problems it has encountered this year.
Both drivers have been affected by the problem during races this year. Alexander Albon retired from two consecutive races due to technical problems earlier this year, including in Austria where he ran as high as sixth in the early stages.
“We’ve obviously been hindered by this cooling issue that’s been there for a few races this year,” said Vowles in a video released by the team, “but probably more marked in the Austria retirement when we were running in a very strong position.”
Williams conducted a test during the first practice session for the British Grand Prix to gather more information on the problem. Vowles said they are not able to reduce the overheating without compromising the car’s pace at the moment.
“We have solutions in place that mean we can get the car through the race but it’s at the cost of performance,” he said. “Ideally what we’re looking for is containment that allows us to make sure we’re not throwing away anything in terms of performance going forward and the team is working diligently on that.”
The team’s cars were less competitive in the wet phases of the race at Silverstone. Vowles said the team has a minor upgrade coming for this weekend’s round at Spa-Francorchamps – where there will be only a single practice session – but he believes they can extract more from the package they already have.
“What we’re observing recently is that we’re definitely able to have a strong race car. Right at the end of the race when it dried up […] the car was quick. But we weren’t quick enough in those intermediate conditions when it was wet and we weren’t quick enough in qualifying which are two areas we absolutely have to work on and improve as we go forward.
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“In terms of where we are at this point in the season, we’re now about midway and obviously a very strong start and then falling away a little bit as others have added performance to their car. Now we have a small update coming to Spa but what we really have to do there is just make sure we capitalise on the car performance that we have available to us.
“There’s still points that we can score between here and the end of the year. It’s making sure that we execute the weekends cleanly and take every opportunity that comes towards us.”
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