‘That’s on our shoulders’ – Vowles stresses Williams need to address errors behind Albon disqualification ‘with immediate effect’

James Vowles has stated that Williams will look to understand what caused Alex Albon’s car to be in breach of the technical regulations “with immediate effect” after the Thai driver was disqualified from qualifying at the Dutch Grand Prix as a result.

On a weekend where the team have added a range of updates to the FW46, Albon reached Q3 of Saturday’s session and ended the hour in P8. However, it was later confirmed that the stewards would investigate a potential problem relating to the floor body of the car.

READ MORE: Albon disqualified from Dutch GP qualifying over illegal Williams floor

Following a hearing attended by Albon and a team representative, the driver was disqualified from the classification, with the stewards’ verdict stating: “The floor body of Car 23 was found to lie outside the regulatory volume mentioned in Article 3.5.1 a) of the FIA Formula One Technical Regulations.

"The team did not dispute the calibration of the FIA measuring system and the measurement of the car, but stated that their own measurements have produced different results.”

Following the news – which added to Williams’ woes after Logan Sargeant was unable to participate in qualifying due to damage sustained to his car from a heavy crash in FP3 – Vowles shared his reaction, with the Team Principal reflecting first on what had been a strong day performance-wise for Albon.

“The performance of the car was positive,” Vowles explained. “We’re in a situation where that update is now producing good results and, in a very tight midfield, we’re able to put the car back into that [Q3] position, back into a points-scoring position for the race today.

“That’s also mirrored by a long run that again was positive. It had pulled clear of the midfield and we were in a situation, in fact at times, where a long run was overlaying with Ferrari, which is a very different situation to what we’ve been to at the beginning of the season.

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“As positive as that is, the facts are we were disqualified for a floor that was too wide. And my job here today is to go through what has happened and what we’re doing to immediately address the situation.”

Reflecting further on how the mistake had happened, Vowles continued: “The floor we have here this weekend – in fact, the whole bodywork of items – are all new. It’s not the first time we’ve been scanned. We’ve obviously been following and complying to all of these procedures since they were brought into place several years ago, and [we] haven’t been found in excess until now.

“We use scanning techniques now rather than physical measuring techniques because it’s not just one point that you have to be aware of, and it’s heights and widths all across some quite complex shapes. Before we come here, we have scanned the floor and the car multiple times.

“It happened back at the factory in isolation with the floor. It happened back at the factory on the car. It happened here on Thursday as well. And we did demonstrate all of these results to the FIA which indicate that our floor is within the legal compliance. But what matters is the adjudication of the FIA, their measurements and their systems, and that we entirely accept.

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“What we now need to do is understand how we could have been wrong in our own measurements and what we need to change in terms of process with immediate effect. There’s only one area of the car that we were not compliant with and it’s an easy fix. But, irrespective, the rule is the rule and it’s black and white in that regard.”

With Williams now due to run a revised upgraded floor in the Dutch Grand Prix, which will be run on both cars, Vowles stressed the importance for the team of ensuring that the hard work they put in is not then undone by such errors occurring.

“We cannot spend hours of work developing an update kit. We cannot ask our drivers to put everything on the line in order to secure points-scoring positions to then throw it away with not being completely there on every single boundary of the regulations, and there’s no one really accountable for that but ourselves,” said Vowles.

“That’s on our shoulders. No one else outside of that has any responsibility. We need to address and get on top of that with immediate effect. We still have – beyond here – this race weekend, where I feel we have a strong enough car to be able to fight through the field.

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“I’m excited by the prospects of today because the car remains quick and we have opportunity in the race. And beyond here, we have nine more races where we have to deliver time and time again with perfection in order to score points and fight our way up the championship.

“This isn’t the standard I want us to hold ourselves to this weekend. But let’s now make it a process change to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”