Engine knocked out
On a Saturday that revealed to the world the clear supremacy of Mercedes compared to the competition in this first chapter of the new technical era of Formula 1, however, there are also some problems for the star’s home. Not with the official team but with the customers, in particular with the Williams. The Grove team mounts, as do McLaren and Alpine, the power unit made in the Brixworth factory. However, something went wrong with the FW48 engines because only Alex Albon took part in the qualifications in Melbourneauthor of the 15th time; if the Thai is bitter about the result, Carlos Sainz is much worse off than him as he wasn’t even able to get on track in Q1. The reason? just a problem with the Mercedes power unit. Who knows, maybe this isn’t a small wake-up call for Toto Wolff too.
“It was a very difficult weekend – commented the very disappointed ex-Ferrari driver – and we had reliability issues in both sessions. It’s a shame because we seemed to have no problems during both tests in Bahrain, so to come here and only do FP1 and the start of FP2, missing both sessions today, is frustrating. We hope to be able to race again tomorrow and accumulate experience and good lessons, given that we are already at a disadvantage“.
A long way back up
The team principal confirmed the problems with the power unit James Vowleswho however also wanted to compliment Mercedes, his former team: “We didn’t have a quiet weekend at all, with only one car on track in qualifying due to some engine reliability problems. We know we are in trouble and that our winter has been difficult, but we have clear ideas about where we need to improve – and quickly – and there are already programs underway to achieve these goals. Our plan for tomorrow is to bring both cars to the finish line – commented Vowles again – so that we can take advantage of what we have learned here and put it into practice in Shanghai next weekend. Congratulations to Mercedes for their one-two today – that’s the benchmark and gives us something to aim for“.
Even Albon, who at least got on the track, spoke about the reliability problems suffered by the team: “Today we gave our all after struggling with some problems over the weekend. We were limited in some free practice sessions, so getting into Q2 was a decent result. There is a lot of work to do and it’s not something that can be solved overnight, but we will continue to push and try to resolve the reliability issues and limitations that we have identified. For tomorrow I think we can expect a bit of chaos, especially at the startand not many teams were able to get proper long runs due to red flags over the weekend, so there could be an interesting situation. From our position, we hope for a bit of chaos and we will try to maintain a clean driving and take advantage of every opportunity in the race.”he concluded.
