The Williams team misses today’s test at the Catalunya circuit in Spain. Thursday is the last day of the first F1 pre-season test. The team assessed the situation after Lance Strolls’ yesterday crash and this morning issued the following statement.
“Following a thorough inspection overnight some damage to the FW40 chassis was discovered and therefore, on safety grounds, the team will not run the car today. A second chassis will be prepared at track this afternoon, as originally planned, with the team aiming to be back on track for the second test next week starting on Tuesday 7 March.”
The team was not sure last night what the situation with the car was. That was Stroll’s second crash in as many days at the track. After the first incident Williams flew a front wing from the Grove headquarters by private jet after the first one. Yesterday’s crash damaged the left front suspension and again the front wing.
Williams Rob Smedley: Lance shouldn’t feel he has let the team down
“Racing, pushing, things happen. You just have to figure out how to make the best of it. Everyone’s quite positive. It was a good day. It was obviously unfortunate what happened at the end, but little issues and things like that happen and you have to move forward”, Stroll explained, quoted by motorsport.com.
“There was an issue on the car. I was kind of a victim of the situation. We are still figuring it out so I can’t give you any detail about it. What happened, happened, and that’s it.”
Williams’ head of performance engineering Rob Smedley said it would be wrong to criticize Stroll.
“Both drivers have talked a lot about these tyres. They are good to lean on them, but there is a certain point where they become very tricky. Lance was out on cold tyres, on a cold medium tyre, on an out lap with a lot of fuel in the car, and the tyre stepped away from him”, Smedley said.
“He was an innocent victim of that happening. That happens and we expect it to happen there is no blame on his part. He shouldn’t feel he has let the team down, otherwise we are living in some kind of terrible blame culture. And we don’t want that.”
Stroll found an unlikely defender in the face of Lewis Hamilton
The triple F1 champion said he felt for the Canadian as 2017 “is the toughest year to come into F1”.
“I know he’s been driving around the world testing in the Williams team”, Hamilton continued. “He’s definitely had more preparation time than any other driver coming in would have had. But that is to be expected. It’s not an easy car to drive at all.”
9️⃣8️⃣ laps completed for Lance Stroll ?
But his day ended on number 9️⃣9️⃣
Every #F1 rookie has known how this feels ? ⬇️#F1Testing pic.twitter.com/pErPyoNhyC
— Formula 1 (@F1) 1 March 2017
