17/07/2025
NEWS STORY
While the Grove outfit has an update for the upcoming Belgian Grand Prix it appears the team's issues are set to continue.
Currently fifth in the standings, the Grove outfit is in danger of being overhauled by three, possibly four teams as the season progresses. The last decent points hauls came in Miami and Imola, while since then the team has struggled, mainly with cooling issues.
Already clearly frustrated, Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz' concern is exacerbated by the fact that there will be few updates over the course of the remainder of the season as the team switches focus to 2026.
"Strong start, strong middle," said Albon at Silverstone, according to Motorsport Week. "We finished and we scored points," he added. "We're not in a bad place. We've just had a rough time of it. We've done a few tests in the car to see where this overheating problem is coming from.
"We need to get on top of that for Spa," he admitted. "At the same time, I see Sauber, I see Haas. They're all getting quicker and quicker. They've put upgrades on their car. We're now falling behind."
"We are trying our best to get on top of all these issues and situations," added his Spanish teammate. "One thing that is keeping us calm and encouraged is that the speed of the car is there.
"I'm confident we could have won the midfield battle in Austria, even almost starting from the back with the pace we had," he insisted. "Every race we are actually very quick and we have a very competitive car but we just need to start putting things together and making less mistakes as a team which I think will come."
"We've obviously been hindered by this cooling issue that's been there for a few races this year," admits team boss James Vowles in the Grove outfit's latest video debrief, "but probably more marked in the Austria retirement when we were running in a very strong position.
"We did a lot of work in FP1" he added, referring to Silverstone, "with a different programme to most cars in order to get on top of it, and we're doing something different between Alex and Carlos.
"We have solutions in place that mean we can get the car through the race, but it's at the cost of performance," he admitted. "Ideally, what we're looking for is containments that allow us to make sure we're not throwing away anything in terms of performance going forward, and the team is working diligently on that as we speak.
"We have a small update coming to Spa," he confirmed, "what we really have to do though is just make sure we capitalise on the car performance that we have available to us.
"There are still points that we can score between here to the end of the year, it's making sure that we execute the weekends cleanly and take every opportunity that comes towards us. We have a number of really good races coming up for us, and it's about delivering the result that the car has in it."