Williams used a Mercedes F1 curfew breach on Thursday evening in Austria, taking its second of five permitted exceptions to fit updated Mercedes power unit elements to both cars. The work came after the new ESME packs arrived at 3pm, leaving the team to get both cars ready before the Austrian Grand Prix in the normal overnight window closed.
Vowles on the late parts
Vowles said, "We have new ESME packs, which I think Mercedes are pretty open about," then added, "We wanted to take that, but it only really appeared at 3pm on Thursday, and we had a tremendous amount of work to do. So I wanted to make sure the cars are properly prepared." That timing forced Williams to choose between waiting and spending one of its limited jokers.
The update came after recent reliability problems in the energy store main enclosure, the area Mercedes has been trying to address across its teams. Williams still had to work through the night in Austria because the parts arrived late, even though the update was made available to all its teams.
Two cars, one joker
Both Williams cars were affected. The team used the exception to fit the revised Mercedes power unit elements to each car, which means the whole operation had to be done in one evening rather than spread across a longer preparation period.
That left Williams with three curfew exceptions still available from its five permitted uses. The team did not spend them casually here; it spent one to keep the cars properly prepared after the late delivery of the update.
Albon and the FW48
Albon also switched to a different FW48 chassis for the weekend after having doubts about the original car’s handling properties in recent races. Vowles said, "There's nothing wrong with the original chassis, but what we wanted to do after Barcelona is specifically capture that and do a series of tests back at the factory," and added that changing chassis was the easiest way to do it operationally.
He also said the balance issue differs slightly between left and right corners and becomes more exposed on a 50-something degree track. Rig testing of the previous chassis helped produce set-up improvements for this weekend, which gave Williams a cleaner baseline even as it burned one of its jokers on the Mercedes work.
McLaren used a joker on Friday evening in Monaco while exploring issues in the same area after Lando Norris stopped on track in FP2, and Cadillac also spent one on Thursday evening because it had a raft of new aero items for both cars. Williams’ move sat in the same narrow space of F1 operations: limited exceptions, late parts, and no margin for delay when the garage has to be ready by morning.
