Australian GP: Tough opening race for Williams F1 Team

Alex Albon:
"It was a long race for us today. Currently we are in no man’s land and not really fighting against the midfield, however our strategy was good, but it’s clear we are lacking pace. It’s obvious from lap times that we’re overweight and not producing enough downforce, and graining was also a problem for us today especially on the hard tyre. Realistically we know where we can find the lap time and the team are working tirelessly on an aggressive plan to get us closer to where we want to be. A positive from today is that we got mileage and that we overcame some reliability issues from previous sessions, but we’ll learn as much as we can from this weekend to apply next time out in Shanghai."

Carlos Sainz:
"It’s been a tough weekend with too many issues across every session. We had a great start and I managed to climb to P12 in the initial laps. Unfortunately, we had an issue with the front wing which cost us all the aero balance and the understeer I picked up meant we started degrading the tyres massively. From then on it became a test session for me to be honest. This front wing issue is not new and we need to focus on solving these sort of problems quickly if we want to improve in the short term. We’ve got homework ahead of us, but I trust we can put together a good plan to make those improvements."

James Vowles, Team Principal:
"A challenging weekend, but with good learning that will serve us well for our future. We know that whilst we're not performing at the level we want to, this is the opportunity to make sure we understand everything about this car and we executed that during the race with both drivers. It's clear that we're lacking performance and there's a plan in place to bring that to the car aggressively. Beyond that we also had a number of small issues across the weekend that are being flushed out - both cars got to the end of the race, but there was performance left on the table as a result of it. We will get back together and review what needs to be changed for Shanghai. There's a lot to learn, and I'm confident that every race we do will be another step.

On a separate note, it was great to see the quality of racing up and down the field under these new regulations, with overtaking at one of the most difficult tracks to pass. So whilst everything isn't perfect, as a sport we're not in a bad place."