James Vowles, Williams Formula 1 boss, admits the strategy failure when team asked Alex Albon to remain on slicks despite rain at the Dutch Grand Prix.
Albon started the race from fourth place but dropped down because of sticking to slicks. He remain one of five drivers, who opted not to pit for intermediate tyres.
Nonetheless, he climbed back and managed to run as high as sixth when the rain hit back in closing stages.
Vowles admitted that opting for intermediates at the start would have yielded better results that slicks.
“You either stop on lap one or lap two, or you stay out,” Vowles told media.
“And the real wrong that a number of teams did is then stop after that point. Once you’re committed, commit.
“The reason why we didn’t stop was on the radar initially it didn’t look like it was going to be as bad as it was. Now, clearly, the losses were quite significant to inter runners.
“You still saw us come back into a points position. It’s not outlandishly terrible, but it was the wrong decision.”
Albon again opted for staying put and pitted a lap later than other. Vowles admitted to failure of strategy on the second instance as well.
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“What we need to go back and do is go look at our systems, our tools, our communication, what can we improve in that process? Because we got it wrong,” he added.
“The second stop as well, coming in for those inters, again, that was wrong. That was one lap late.
“On all of these the key point is to reflect on it. We know it’s one lap late, that’s the easy but the hard bit is how in hindsight, with all the information you have, can you pull that back and do a better decision with it?”
Albon finished eight at the end of the race. He agreed to his boss on the team’s inability to analyse on the run time.
“We need to review that second pitstop call,” he said. “It’s so tricky because I didn’t pit and for the first half lap, I thought perfect, I’ve actually overcut everyone right now, I’ve overcut the two cars in front of me, because sector one and midway through sector two it was still dry.”
He added: “It’s one of those things. It feels like we finished today slightly disappointed that we didn’t finish sixth, but we still finished eighth. It’s still an amazing result for us.”
