Williams Martini Racing Chief Technical Officer Paddy Lowe says the team have to “go away and look deeply into what has affected our pace” following a pointless Bahrain Grand Prix.
Williams struggled throughout the entire Bahrain weekend, failing to make it out of the first qualifying session and setting the eighteenth and twentieth fastest times of the day. This luck didn’t improve in the race, as both Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin failed to make any headway – ultimately finishing in fourteenth and fifteenth place, behind even perennial back-marker Marcus Ericsson, who scored his first points in fifty races.
Ericsson’s points for Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team and Kevin Magnussen and Esteban Ocon scoring points for the Haas F1 Team and Sahara Force India F1 Team respectively, makes Williams the only team to not have scored a point in this year’s campaign so far, and as such, leaves them at the bottom of the Constructors’ table.
This lack of pace, says Lowe, needs to be investigated thoroughly in the week before the Chinese Grand Prix.
“It was not a great end to a very tough weekend for the team. We didn’t have the pace today to compete with any other cars except ourselves,” said Lowe.
“We have clearly got to go away and look deeply into what has affected our pace, even relative to where we were in Melbourne just two weeks ago. We’ll see what we can do in the short time available between now and China next week. This is a time to stick together as a team and work intelligently and diligently on the problems we face.
“Finally, I hope the Ferrari mechanic is OK after the nasty looking incident in the pitstop during the race.“
