Williams boss James Vowles said he was “hurting” after the Formula 1 team suffered three costly crashes in Brazil on Sunday and dropped a place in the constructors’ world championship.
Franco Colapinto and Alex Albon both crashed in qualifying at Interlagos, postponed from Saturday, with the latter driver unable to take part in the race because the mechanics were unable to rebuild his car in time.
Argentine rookie Colapinto then crashed again in the race, triggering red flags.
With Renault-owned Alpine finishing second and third with Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly in a rain-hit grand prix, Williams fell to ninth in the standings with three rounds remaining and 27 points between them and eighth-placed RB.
“The nature of Formula One is that you can have some of the most incredible feelings and results, as well as some of the lowest moments that you can feel within a sport. I think it’s fair to say this weekend is the second of those two,” Vowles said.
“We’ve had three incredibly large crashes in just a few hours from one another and have a tremendous amount of work to get ourselves back on top of our spares situation before we go to Las Vegas in just a few weeks’ time.”
Vowles said he had watched the race through to the end, despite Colapinto crashing before the half-distance, because he wanted “to make sure I remember today because this isn’t what I want us to be feeling in the future.”
Albon said it had been a tough few weeks with the team now in a challenging position.
“I really didn’t expect the incident in Turn One to happen, so we need to take a proper look to figure out what happened,” he added.
“It’s disappointing as it would’ve been a great opportunity to score points, as we knew coming to Brazil there is always a chance for crazy races, however it’s our competitors who’ve been able to capitalise on this.”