Alex Albon has been disqualified from the qualifying result, after his team were unable to provide the FIA with a sufficient fuel sample from the FW44.
Albon qualified P16 in Melbourne, faring better than his teammate Nicholas Latifi, who was swiped by Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll into a heavy crash in Q1, for which Stroll received a three place grid penalty.
Already with his own three place grid drop (ironically for his crash with Stroll), Albon had a lot of work to do coming into the weekend. Albon stopped on track after dropping out of Q1- with Williams later unable to provide the required 1.0 litre fuel sample to the FIA, as dictated by Artivle 6.5.2 of the FIA Formula 1 Technical Regulations. The driver was then disqualified from the results by the stewards.
After qualifying, Car 23 had insufficient fuel to yield the required one litre sample.Given this situation, Car 23 is not in compliance with the requirements of Article 6.5 of the FIA Formula 1 Technical Regulations. According to Art. 6.5.2 competitors must ensure that a one litre sample of fuel may be taken from the car at any time. The procedure was followed however the one litre sample of fuel was unable to be taken. The stewards determine to apply the standard penalty for technical infringements. Therefore they took into account, that it shall be no defence to claim that no performance advantage was obtained. The stewards have received a request from Williams Racing to allow Car 23 to start the race. The stewards therefore grant permission for Car 23, Alex Albon to start the race.
The Stewards statement.
The late red flag in qualifying only gave drivers two minutes to cross the line from leaving the pitlane. That meant Albon had to queue at the end of the pitlane to gain track position ahead of the green light, and Williams head of vehicle performance Dave Robson believes that extended period out in the pitlane and the outlap “race” with fellow competitors may have contributed to Albon’s lack of fuel.
We could see a problem as he came towards the pitlane at the end of that lap where something wasn’t quite right, so we opted to stop the car just to make sure we didn’t damage anything. I think the fact that we had to go and queue at the end of the pitlane after the red flag to get that lap in meant that the outlap was then a lot more aggressive than we had planned. So, I think that’s why we were a bit lower than we would’ve liked.
Robson explained the verdict.
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