Austrian Grand Prix: Will Williams F1 fare better at Red Bull Ring?

Williams is hoping they can rebound from a slow start this weekend at the F1 Austrian Grand Prix

Following a stunning seventh-place finish in the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship a season ago, there were hopes for even more at Williams this season. When the team launched their 2024 challenger in New York City in early February Team Principal James Vowles made it clear: Fighting at the front is the goal.

“I’m confident we’ve, we’ve done a really good job,” said Vowles to the media, including SB Nation, in New York City. “But what I care about is us fighting up front properly for championships again.”

But that goal has gotten off to a rocky start this season. While Vowles has consistently stressed patience and a long-term approach since taking over at Williams, the team has just two points on the season, thanks to Alexander Albon’s ninth-place finish at the Monaco Grand Prix. That sees the team mired at the bottom of the Constructors’ standings, ahead of only Haas.

Complicating matters is the fact that Williams is coming off two difficult race weekends. Despite Albon qualifying tenth in Montreal, the team left the Canadian Grand Prix without any points, as both Albon and Logan Sargeant saw their races end before the checkered flag. Then last week in Barcelona they were on the back foot from the first practice session and saw both drivers eliminated in Q1.

Albon eventually started the race from pit lane after the team made changes to his FW46 following qualifying, but ultimately it was the same result as Montreal: Another weekend without points.

Can they make something happen in Austria?

In a video released by the team ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix Vowles addressed their problems in Barcelona, noting how Sargeant’s FW46 in particular struggled to generate downforce.

“It’s fair to say that both cars have been suffering with an odd situation where we can measure a small amount of downforce loss.” described the Williams boss. “That’s been happening across several events, more typically on Alex’s side than on Logan’s side, Logan here across three different floors.”

As outlined by Vowles the team tried three different floors on Sargeant’s car in Barcelona, trying to generate the right level of downforce, or at least the same level of downforce as they were seeing on Albon’s FW46.

That mission came up empty, and the team is still searching for answers.

“We had what we know to be a good state floor on Friday in FP1,” Vowles outlined. “That’s where he was due to start. That reported a loss. We had the same [when] we changed to another floor for FP2 and the same again as we changed to a brand new floor, in fact, for qualifying.

“The reason why we were changing floors is simply that the floors are geometrically in a good way so when you put a floor in the car, you’re continuously – all teams will do this – adjusting it to get into the optimum position, relative to where it should be from design. But even in that state, we were seeing an amount of reported loss and that wasn’t happening on Alex’s side.”

Vowles admitted that the situation is rather “frustrating” for the team.

“I’m more in a situation that when you’ve changed three different floors, I think it’s fair to say you don’t question the floor, because they were reporting exactly the same amount of loss. So I think either we’re not measuring this correctly, which is entirely possible, or that we have another element that we’re not understanding on the car in that circumstance.

“It’s frustrating because that is also, to be fair, an element of modern day Formula 1 cars where we’re trying to get a floor within decimals of a millimetre to be positionally correct. So it’s not unusual either,” continued Vowles. “What we need to make sure is as we go through into Austria and Silverstone, we continue doing tests, as we did here, to understand what is changing that reading, or do we trust readings going forward.”

Vowles then outlined how the circuit in Barcelona may have posed problems for the FW46, specifically concerning “lateral Gs,” and that hopefully the team is in a better spot at Red Bull Ring as well as Silverstone.

“There are certain aspects of Barcelona that make it fairly unique. It’s a good mix of high-speed content, low-speed and mid-speed. More in the mid than the high-speed, definitely,” began Vowles. “It’s a circuit where you’re very hot on tires. Typically, as you can see there, it was mid-summer really in Barcelona with track temperatures at the higher end, but it’s not the first time we’ve run at higher temperature. There’s a lot of energy that goes in as well as the result of the high-speed and the mid-speed corners.

“One of the other characteristics is the corner profiles are very different to others. It’s not that you’re rotating and getting the rotation done quickly, it’s actually a long time spent a continuous lateral G,” continued Vowles. “These may or may not be contributing factors. The point to this is simply to show that we have to go and break all of that down, and understand what has characterized or caused a performance loss in simulation. Once you have it in simulation, you’re then able to adapt the car both through set-up and fundamentals of aero design in order to improve it. And that’s the journey that we’re on.

“I don’t expect that this performance will translate now in Austria or Silverstone. I think you’ll see a return to a more normal condition.”

In the team’s media preview, both Albon and Sporting Director Sven Smeets indicated that they too believe Red Bull Ring may prove more amenable to the characteristics of the FW46.

“As we leave Barcelona and head to Austria for the second round of the triple header, we are hoping to bounce back after a tough weekend. With Austria being a Sprint weekend, as well as the fact that the weather might be a factor, there will be an opportunity to achieve a good result,” said the driver. “On paper, this track suits our car more than Barcelona so let’s see what the weekend brings.”

“After our disappointing result in Barcelona, we are looking to return to our performance from the races before Spain,” said Smeets. “Austria will be a sprint event again, so we won’t have much time to get the car in a good window before we start Sprint Qualifying on Friday evening. We will be using the softer range of compounds this weekend and both drivers know this circuit very well.

“It’s a track that should suit our car and, with the weather forecast still giving some chances of showers, we should be in a good position to fight for points this weekend.”