Vowles: Both Williams drivers deserve praise

In Baku, Williams scored 10 points – more than in any of the previous 16 stages of the season, and ahead of Alpine in the Constructors’ Championship. Naturally, team boss James Vowles is delighted with such a successful performance, and separately he praised Franco Colapinto, the 21-year-old Argentine, who last weekend drove in only his second race in Formula 1.

James Vowles: “We earned 10 points – it’s absolutely fantastic! Franco, who became a Williams driver, opened the scoring in Formula 1 in his second Grand Prix, and this is an exceptional result.

We had a strong race, helped by the technical innovations we introduced at Zandvoort and Monza, but they continued to work well at this circuit, allowing both cars to qualify for the final qualifying round.

In the race we decided to split tactics to try to fight with Fernando Alonso, but he is a very smart driver and it is difficult to beat him. Also, I think the rubber degradation on the Aston Martin car was a little less severe than on Alex’s Williams, and we have to figure that out. And still, the pace of the FW46 was almost at the right level.

Towards the end of the race, Franco did a great job staying just a few seconds behind Alex and being ready to react to any situation that could arise on the track. This is exactly what happened (we are talking about an accident on the 49th lap, which took Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz, who were in the top five, out of contention).

Both Williams drivers deserve credit, especially since it is not easy to cover the distance of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in a single pit stop, as it requires you to use the tyre resource to the max and not make any mistakes. But Alex and Franco did a great job.

The next round of the season will be in Singapore and I am very curious to see what results we can achieve there and in the remaining races. There are still many opportunities ahead to consolidate our success.”