Formula 1

Williams Racing’s Three Amigos set for Mexican test

Fraser Masefield
27 Oct 2022
4 min read

Coming straight off the back of a highly eventful weekend of Formula One racing in Austin, Texas, the Williams Racing team and its now trio of drivers make the short hop over the border to Mexico City for one of the most colourful races on the calendar.

Joining regular drivers Alexander Albon and Nicholas Latifi for the first time in a competitive F1 environment in Austin was American charger Logan Sargeant, the Floridian taking part in FP1. And again, Sargeant will step in for the opening session of the weekend in place of Albon.

Logan Sargeant (USA) Williams Racing.
United States Grand Prix, Thursday 20th October 2022. Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA.

“I’m excited to be getting back in the car for FP1 in Mexico and building on the progress I made in Austin,” commented Sargeant on his team’s official press release. “My first session gave me a chance to reference the driveability of the car, the way it handles and how it feels on the brakes.

“All these learnings will help me to visualise everything and make the necessary changes before I go into my second FP1 session.

“Being able to have the experience of driving an F1 car at high altitude will be beneficial to my development. I’m looking forward to working with Alex’s side of the garage this weekend and providing the team with feedback to help their race preparations.”

Although escaping the clutches of Q1 has been something of a hurdle over recent races, the race pace of the Williams FW44 remains relatively strong, Anglo-Thai Albon just missing out on adding to his points haul in finishing 11th in Austin.

“We’ve come off a pretty good weekend in Austin, so hopefully we can bring some of this into Mexico,” commented Albon. “On paper, the track should suit our car, however it’s quite a unique circuit being high altitude with the downforce level quite high but the actual downforce on track is very low, so the car does slide around a lot.

“I’m excited to go back after a few years so let’s see what we can do over the weekend.”

Alexander Albon (THA) Williams Racing FW44.
United States Grand Prix, Saturday 22nd October 2022. Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA.

With only three races remaining in what has been another gruelling season, focus is already switching to the development of the FW45 ahead of 2023 as Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance, explains.

“The car setup will be similar to last weekend, but we will need to pay attention to the effect of the altitude on brake and PU cooling,” said Robson.

“With only three events remaining this season, the FW44 upgrade cycle is mostly complete and our focus is on maximising the package that we have and checking some of the big setup decisions that we made earlier in the season.

“This will give us some useful information on how the FW44 has evolved aerodynamically and will provide some useful correlation data for setup concepts that we may choose to carry forwards to FW45.”

TEAM UP WITH ACRONIS

Prominent once again on the nose of the car and on the front wing endplates this season are the team’s official cyber protection partner Acronis. Williams Racing uses Acronis technology to add extra layers of protection to its IT infrastructure, protecting hundreds of servers and endpoint devices.

During the 2021 season and continuing this year, Acronis opened up an exciting #TeamUp Program, giving new and existing service providers the opportunity to support sports partnerships, join the sports ecosystem, attend races and enjoy amazing sports marketing benefits.

To find out more and to become a part of this exciting #TeamUp programme, please visit Cyber Protection for global sports – Acronis

Williams Racing FW44 front wings.
Spanish Grand Prix, Thursday 19th May 2022. Barcelona, Spain.

Fraser Masefield

Sports news and features writer, web editor and author.

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