Paddy Lowe was left to reflect on another disappointing day for Williams Martini Racing around the Circuit de Monaco as Sergey Sirotkin and Lance Stroll ended well outside the points on Sunday.
Sirotkin was left hampered right from the start after being handed a ten-second stop and go penalty after his tyres were not fitted to his car at the three-minute marker ahead of the race, which was even more depressing as the Russian had started higher up the field than expected and could have been in the fight for the points.
Lowe, the Chief Technical Officer of the Grove-based team, admitted the penalty, caused by an unexpected wheel assembly problem, left Sirotkin well adrift of the field and unable to challenge for what would have been Williams’ second top ten finish of the season.
“A hugely disappointing day because we’d had a pretty promising weekend so far, certainly with Sergey starting in a better grid position than we’ve had more recently,” said Lowe.
“Unfortunately, we suffered a wheel assembly problem on the grid with Sergey’s car which meant we fitted the wheels after the three-minute deadline. Consequently, he was handed a 10-second stop-go penalty which put him half a lap adrift of the pack.
“His race was ruined from that point on. He spent the afternoon in that situation suffering constant blue flags. We converted to a two-stop strategy as that is actually the quickest race if you’re not holding a position. It was good to see that he could put in some quick laps at the end whilst in free air.”
On the other side of the garage, Stroll was having issues with overheating brakes, which caused not one but two punctures before the team could get on top of the problem, but the problems left him two laps down in seventeenth.
“On Lance’s side, he had a puncture on lap nine due to the brakes becoming too hot, which overheated the rim and caused the failure,” said Lowe. “We failed to control that on the second set of tyres and he suffered another puncture.
“The issue was managed for the rest of the race, but with so many pitstops and blue flags, Lance was in no position to make any progress.”
