08/12/2024
NEWS STORY
Sven Smeets, Sporting Director: We started from P18 and P20 today which is never easy.
After a few laps both drivers made some good progress and were driving well. Unfortunately, Franco was hit by Piastri resulting in a puncture, so we had to pit early. Afterwards his pace was good until we unfortunately had to retire the car due to a suspected PU failure. Not the last race we wanted for him, but he has showed he deserves his place on the grid. As planned, we boxed Alex early but as the race unfolded and many cars around us went for their second stop, we decided to stay out and try the one stop as it was the only way to stay in the points. The race was a few laps too long as the tyres dropped off, so at the end Alex finished P11 after a strong race. It has been a tough, long, and very hard season for the whole team but we have shown resilience and will return stronger next year.
Alex Albon: With ten laps to go, I thought it would be hard to hold on. The tyre's grip stayed quite strong, but the temperatures just dropped off. Once the track started to cool down, I couldn't drive quickly enough to keep the temperature in the tyres, so it felt like qualifying laps from about 25 laps in until the end, making it a very physical race. It's a shame not to reward the team with a points finish. My consensus of the season is that it's been one of missed opportunities. It's easy to focus on this latter end of the season and the incidents, but realistically, we started with the car overweight when we should've been fighting for points. We bought one major upgrade, as our plan was always to focus on the future and at that point, a lot of teams naturally overtook us. In the end, I'm not too upset because I'm here for the long term and I know as a team we're not interested in being the best of the midfield, we're putting in the work now for the future to be back fighting for wins and championships and I believe in this journey we're on. Thank you to Franco for being a great teammate. He earned his place in F1 during these remaining races and I'm sure I'll be seeing him somewhere on the grid soon.
Franco Colapinto: Retiring the car was not the way I wanted to end the final race of the season. I had a good start and was trying to get through the race, but Piastri hit me which caused a puncture and some damage. We still had good pace after we changed tyres but unfortunately, we had to retire the car due to a suspected PU issue. The last couple of races have been really unlucky for me. It hasn't been the end to the season that I wanted but that's part of Formula 1. It's still been a dream come true, but I obviously would've loved to have finished how we started. I've been working towards racing in F1 since I was very young and I'm so grateful to everyone at Williams for the opportunity to put me in the car for these last nine races.
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Yas Marina here.