Williams should not have described their tactics in last weekend’s race as the “Singapore plan”, said team principal James Vowles, as it risked being “misconstrued.”
The team told its drivers Carlos Sainz Jnr and Alexander Albon to maintain a close formation in the second half of Sunday’s race to reduce their chance of being passed by Isack Hadjar, who gained on them at the end of the race.
After Hadjar made his pit stop and came out behind the two Williams cars, race engineer James Urwin told Albon: “This is potential Singapore plan.”
The team’s plan was to keep Albon within one second of Sainz so he could repeatedly use his Drag Reduction System in the three zones around the Jeddah circuit and so thwart Hadjar’s efforts to attack them. Sainz did the same with his rival Lando Norris when he won the Singapore Grand Prix in 2023
However after the race Vowles admitted the choice of words could have led to an unfortunate misunderstanding. “In the race you’ll hear we used the words – James used the wrong words – he said ‘remember Singapore’, but that can be misconstrued,” said Vowles.
Renault won the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix in 2008 by instructing one of their drivers, Nelson Piquet Jnr, to crash and trigger a Safety Car period after his team mate, Fernando Alonso, had made his pit stop. The infamous plan, which became known as ‘Crashgate’ was uncovered the following year and is now at the heart of a legal case which could change the outcome of that year’s world championship.
Vowles made it clear the team had taken its inspiration from Sainz’s tactics in the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix.
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“One of the first things I saw in Carlos that absolutely just blew my mind was [how] he managed the gap in Singapore to win a few years ago,” Vowles told Channel 4 after the race. “The conversation we ended up having was just how was that executed, what were you doing at the time.
“This morning we went into a discussion that here a ‘DRS train’ is actually one of the few places that can protect you. There is only one overtaking place and if you form that DRS train you should be fairly secure. So we already formed that this morning as a plan of action.”
The Williams drivers secured eighth and ninth places ahead of Hadjar using the strategy. Vowles said the plan was “executed just brilliantly by our drivers, Carlos just gently backing up into Alex and holding that gap at about 0.9, and that was it.”
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