Williams have confirmed that Alex Albon will play no part in qualifying for Saturday’s Sprint race in Montreal. Albon suffered a big crash in practice a few hours before after striking a groundhog which had run across the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in front of his car. He could not avoid running the rodent over, which broke the suspension on his car and caused it to hit a wall at high speed.
The car was swiftly returned to the garage so that mechanics could begin work as quickly as possible, in the hope that they would be able to fix it in time for the second session of the day. But it has now been confirmed that there was not enough time to make repairs.
A statement from the Williams team, issued around 20 minutes before the start of Sprint qualifying, read: “Following the incident in FP1 involving wildlife on track, Alex will not run in this afternoon’s Sprint qualifying session. Despite the best efforts of the team to repair the car, the damage sustained was far more extensive than originally thought, requiring the gearbox and power unit to be replaced.
“It’s unlucky for Alex, but we’ll look to take all the learnings from Carlos’ side of the garage to be as prepared as possible for tomorrow’s sessions.” As alluded to in the statement, Carlos Sainz was left standing as the only Williams driver to take part in qualifying for Saturday’s Sprint race.
Speaking after the practice session, team principal James Vowles had cast doubt on Albon’s chances of taking part in Sprint qualifying as he detailed the “extensive” damage done to the car. He confirmed damage had been sustained to “the front corner, rear corner, floor, front wing and suspension”.
Vowles added: “[Alex’s] initial reaction is obviously frustration, because he was keeping his head up on Carlos, and his pace was looking good, and he needs this session. In these Sprint sessions, you get 60 minutes. That’s it, and to lose over half of it is frustrating. Back in the garage, he’s more worried about his mum, but suspects he’s going to have to pay to adopt a family of marmots, because that is a consequence of that.”
Albon was not the only driver forced to watch Sprint qualifying from the garage. Liam Lawson also had to sit out the session with work ongoing on his Racing Bulls car after he pulled over at the side of the track early in the practice session, having suffered a suspected hydraulics failure.
With only 10 minutes to go before the start of the first competitive session of the weekend, there was still no gearbox fitted to Lawson’s car and several other key components missing as mechanics worked as quickly as they could to try to get the car ready to go qualifying. But when the session began Lawson was saw on the pit wall and not wearing his racing overalls, signalling that the work to get his car ready had been completed in vain.