Williams plan rear-end replacement to save Alex Albon’s crucial Singapore FP2

Williams faces work on Alex Albon's car after the driver suffered a brake fire during the early stages of FP1 of the Singapore Grand Prix weekend. 

The Grove team was forced to park the car in the pitlane as mechanics rushed to extinguish the flames and FIA officials monitored the situation. Albon, squinting from the smoke, eventually climbed out of the car, but the damage was done. The FW47 now faces a rear-end assembly change as the team fights to return Albon to his machinery for FP2.

Team principal James Vowles confirmed the scale of the repair while speaking to Sky Sports F1.

"It'll be basically a rear-end change, so it just takes time to evaluate. It's far easier now, we have pre-built rear ends, gearbox, rear suspension, etc," he said. 

This includes swapping the pre-assembled gearbox casing, rear suspension, and the components surrounding these, but modular parts make this an easier job than it used to be years ago. They will have to do this, on top of rebleeding the systems, as night falls on the Singapore street circuit.

"I'd prefer not to miss any," he told Martin Brundle, who argued that the first session is the one to miss if forced to, due to it seeing different conditions to qualifying and the grand prix. "But to your point, you can already see how quickly that ramped up in that session, three, four seconds, so FP2 will be a lot more relevant.

Alexander Albon, Williams

"But this is also a track where it is a street track and you're going to build up into it, so he'll be on the back foot."

With cooler evening temperatures approaching, FP2 will be the session with the closest conditions to both qualifying and the race today. But the loss of mileage today will likely be felt by Albon, who may have been looking forward to acclimatising himself to the demanding track.

Talking to Sky Sports F1, pitlane reporter Ted Kravitz commented on what he could see at the time.

"Williams say it was a hardware problem on the rear brakes," he reported. "They had this with Carlos Sainz in Austria, which meant he could not start the race. They don't think it was a brake-by-wire failure, which didn't allow the rear axle to be slowed down by the ERS system and that led the rears to overheat.

"And Williams have also confirmed Albon is out for FP1 but they are confident they can fix the problem and get him out for FP2. Not a lot lost in terms of relevant track conditions but a lot lost in terms of getting your eye in on the circuit."

To read more Motorsport.com articles visit our website.