Williams F1 in More Trouble as they Confirm Missing Day 2 of Testing

Things have just gone from bad to worse for the Williams F1 team. According to the latest developments, they are expected to skip the entire second day of pre-season testing. The Grove-based team may not even start running until Wednesday “at the earliest”.

Williams F1 is currently scrambling to finish the build of its FW42 and had to cancel a planned pre-test shakedown. Then, they announced last weekend that they would miss the opening day of testing as well.

The car was still being finished back at the team’s Grove headquarters on Monday morning.

That led to doubts Williams would be able to get the car to Barcelona in time to belatedly start testing on Tuesday morning as hoped.

Deputy team principal Claire Williams has now said the team does not expect it will be able to run on track before Wednesday.

“It is looking more likely than not that we will now not be in a position to run on track until Wednesday at the earliest,” she said.

“This is obviously extremely disappointing, but it is unfortunately the situation we are in.

“We will be getting the FW42 on track as soon as we are able.”

The news means Williams is poised to miss at least half of the first test and 25% of the total amount of pre-season track time.

It is an early blow in its bid to recover from a bad 2018 season in which it fell to last in the constructors’ championship.

Williams has an all-new driver line-up for 2019 and it remains to be seen how it divides up whatever testing it manages this week.

Robert Kubica and George Russell were due to share Monday’s running, with Russell and reserve driver Nicholas Latifi scheduled to drive Tuesday.

Latifi and Kubica were meant to share duties on Wednesday before Russell replaced Latifi for the final day.