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Atlassian Williams Racing’s 2025 challenger,
the FW47, made its on-track debut earlier today, successfully completing
200km at the Silverstone circuit. Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz shared driving
duties, experiencing this year’s car for the first time.
The day began with a special live broadcast, streamed globally, where the team unveiled the FW47
and celebrated the team’s new title partnership with Atlassian. Williams
welcomed partners, media and 47 loyal Williams fans from across the globe,
who were selected from more than 17,000 competition entrants.
Atlassian appeared on the car for the first time in a one-off bespoke
design, with the official 2025 race livery set to be revealed on 18th
February at the F1 75 Live Launch at London’s O2 Arena. The partnership deal
is the biggest in Williams’ 48-year history and demonstrates another vote of
confidence for the team’s mission to return to the front of the grid.
Carlos Sainz took to the track at 10:05am, putting in his first lap in the FW47 live streamed to the
world. Despite typical cold and windy February conditions at Silverstone,
Carlos successfully completed all his planned laps with no issues, before
Alex took to the wheel for the session after lunch, enjoying some brief
afternoon sun.
James Vowles, Team Principal: “The first run of
the FW47 is the result of tens of thousands of hours of work and a moment of
immense pride that symbolises the progress we are making at Atlassian
Williams Racing. We rolled out the car at the precise moment we said we
would, on live television, with a formidable new driver line-up and a
fantastic new title partner in Atlassian. There is a lot to look forward to
in 2025 and I can’t wait to go racing next month.”
Dave Robson, Chief Engineer: “Today we launched the FW47 at Silverstone and had the
opportunity to shakedown the new car and to check that the systems are behaving as
intended.
Carlos and Alex shared the driving through the day, and between them were able to
complete the permitted 200km without issue. The car ran well and, having completed a few careful laps to check
that everything was working correctly, we were able to push the car hard and
confirm that there were no major problems. Inevitably, we found a few very
minor issues, but these will be quickly resolved before we arrive in
Bahrain, and they didn’t affect the running today.
In the cold conditions, and using the Pirelli promotional tyres, it is impossible to
assess the performance of the FW47, however, the telemetry and driver feedback suggests
that the basic characteristics of the car are very close to expectation and
there are no immediate handling concerns.
We now have a few days to use the experience from today to finalise our testing plan for
Bahrain. Now that we are confident that the car will run well, we are in a great
position to maximise our time in Bahrain and to ensure that we arrive in Melbourne
ready to start the 2025 season strongly.”
Carlos Sainz: “The first 100 kilometres in the FW47 are done and it has been a smooth day. We managed
to complete all the run plan without any issues, and I got my first proper
feeling for the car. It was a bold statement from Williams to show the first
lap of this new car to our partners, the media, and our fans, and it went
very well. Good job to everyone back at Grove – now we're ready for the
season to start."
Alex Albon: “I'm really happy. Normally this weather makes the car feel good, and it did
today. We won't know for sure what the car is like until Bahrain, but the car was reliable, and we put on
a great show for our partners and fans, so I hope everyone enjoyed that.
Roll on Bahrain!” |
