DOUBLE CRASH DISASTER FOR WILLIAMS

Williams endured a tough Jeddah weekend, with both its cars involved in raceending accidents.

Nicholas Latifi had crashed in qualifying when he found his handling was suddenly “rear limited” as he ran through the Turn 13 banked hairpin during a tyre preparation run in Q1, which meant he lost the rear of the FW44 and slid into the wall.

In the race, Latifi ran at the back of the field behind team-mate Alex Albon before Daniel Ricciardo’s early stop for Mclaren dropped him behind the Williams pair. Just after Albon had come in to get rid of the medium tyres on which most had started, Latifi “lost the rear going down to the final corner” and crashed at the exit of the long left-hander.

Albon impressed Williams with his pace during the long second stint on the hard tyres but, after the late-stopping Kevin Magnussen and Lewis Hamilton had made their way back through the pack, a botched pass on Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin put him out on lap 48. The stewards felt he was “wholly or predominantly to blame for the collision” after locking up and clattering Stroll’s left side, strewing debris across Turns 1 and 2. Albon will therefore drop three places on the Australian GP grid.

Stroll was classified 12th after pitting with left-rear damage, with temporary team-mate Nico Hulkenberg last of the runners to go the distance in 11th, unfortunate that the safety car negated the advantage of his hard-tyre starting strategy.