Williams acknowledges clumsy mistake that caused FIA penalty
F1 News
Williams have responded in a statement to the punishment it received from the stewards and the FIA. According to the British team, the penalty came from a misunderstanding only, with no illegal wing involved.
"We had concerns over the cameras not working in FP1, and as a result were in dialogue with the FIA throughout the session. Following the session, the FIA and ourselves have reviewed all procedures, and we can confirm that the failure to provide footage in the allotted time was down to a miscommunication, and internal processes will be addressed as a result so that this does not reoccur," stated Williams.
"For completeness, we provided all footage as requested in Melbourne with no issue and will continue to support the FIA and provide all required footage in a timely manner going forwards," continued James Vowles' team.
Why didn't Williams have an SD card?
"We have no concerns over the legality of our wing. It is the same wing we ran in Melbourne, is fully compliant and we did not have to make any adjustments further to the issuing of the new TD. Yesterday’s issue was procedural, and we are confident that we will provide all future recordings without issue.
"We understand that to ensure fair policing of technical regulations the FIA issued the resulting fine and we thank them for the constructive conversations and measured handling of this matter."
The process Williams refers to in the statement was the fact that Williams itself should have provided an SD card for the FIA's camera. This had been in a technical directive, which Williams had apparently missed. The FIA issued a €50,000 fine, of which €40,000 was conditional.
This article was written in collaboration with Tim Kraaij
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