Williams Martini Racing’s chief technical officer Paddy Lowe described the Japanese Grand Prix as “a disappointing day” as Sergey Sirotkin and Lance Stroll came home sixteenth and seventeenth.
Lowe believed the team had the pace to move further up the grid than they ultimately did at the Suzuka International Racing Course.
“A disappointing day. We had the pace and grid positions to beat some cars today, but we didn’t manage to do so overall not the result we hoped for.
“We had good reliability with both cars coming home.”
Stroll’s race was compromised early on when he received a penalty for an incident with Fernando Alonso at the chicane.
“Lance received a penalty for an incident at turn 16, and on top of that in his second stint, which needed to be a good, long stint, he flat spotted one of his tyres, so effectively that ruined his opportunity today.”
Sirotkin lost places at the start and despite the team changing the strategy, the Russian was unable to make it work.
“On Sergey’s side, he lost quite a few places in the opening laps, therefore, we chose to gamble with an earlier stop, but for various reasons that didn’t work out, so we had to make a second stop.”
