The floor of the FW46 in front of the rear wheels was 3 mm wider and did not comply with the volumes that the FIA prescribes in the F1 technical regulations. Alexander Albon’s Williams was excluded from qualifying for the Dutch GP after the brilliant eighth place of the Anglo-Thai driver achieved in Q3. The Grove team arrived at Zandvoort with a substantial package of updates to the car.
Williams FW46: here is the new design of the inlet of the bellies with the upper cover
Photo by: George Piola
In addition to the mouth of the sidepods which now features the upper cover instead of the lower tray, there has been a careful update work that has led to gaining weight by reducing the mass in the roll hoop area which has allowed for a more tapered design of the engine cover, but the most important change obviously concerns the bottom which has been completely revised from the inlet Venturi channels, to the curb and the diffuser.
Something must have slipped through the Grove team’s control systems, but the fact is that Albon had his qualifying times cancelled and will be forced to start from the pit lane at the Dutch GP.
The FIA no longer carries out checks on the box templates that in the pit lane are entrusted to the stewards of the International Federation. The shapes of modern single-seaters have become particularly complex, so that traditional measurements would no longer be sufficient, especially since the technical regulations no longer speak of linear units of measurement, but of volumes that the individual parts of the F1 must respect in order to comply with the rules.
Detail of the new airbox of the Williams FW46
Photo by: Uncredited
The checks, therefore, take place with sophisticated scanning systems: each team is equipped with its own tools for the approval of the cars from home, but then the files that are read by the FIA systems count.
It is easy to imagine the shock of the Williams technicians when they learned that the new floor of the FW46 did not respect the expected limits of 3 mm. It must be said that James Vowles’ men had carried out repeated checks before shipping the cars to Holland: first the floor alone and then the entire single-seater were subjected to scans which showed the full compliance of the car.
The measurements were also repeated on the track, but in the end a significant discrepancy emerged compared to the data that were read by the staff of the verifier Jo Bauer. Williams will not appeal, accepting the decision of the sports commissioners that decreed the disqualification of Albon, but beyond the poor impression made by the team, James wants to understand what actually happened…
“This is not the first time we have been checked,” Vowles explained. “Obviously we have followed and respected all the procedures and we have never recorded any anomalies. We have shown the results of our scans to the FIA which gave us a perfectly legal floor.”
Obviously Williams wanted to demonstrate their good faith, accepting that there was an error in the car’s approval without any desire to be clever: there is a clear desire to change the processes to avoid the problem from happening again.
Albon will have to start from the pit lane because the FW46 will be in a different configuration to the car that ran in qualifying. There are two options: cut the final part of the floor of the 3 mm excess, thus ruining the aerodynamic update work that had been done in the wind tunnel, or fit the old floor which is perfectly legal, but guarantees a lower downforce, therefore impacting performance?
Logan Sargeant abandons Williams FW46 on fire after FP3 crash
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
With Logan Sargeant already wrecking a car in FP3 and Williams having a shortage of spare parts, this is far from an easy choice…
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