Albon had difficult start to the weekend in Singapore: this was the problem

Williams had an opening day of the weekend in Singapore to quickly forget. Logan Sargeant finished the second free practice session nineteenth, his teammate Alex Albon was even twentieth and last. The Thai-British driver - who considers this GP his second home race - had to go in early with a problem on his power unit. The problem could not be fixed during the session.

By now Williams has a pretty good idea of what the problem was. The fact is: it will be working through the night to fix the car, as in Singapore the evening was well underway by the time the flag dropped. Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance, was therefore not satisfied with Friday. "A tricky day for us, especially on Alex’s side of the garage. We opted to do some testing with Alex in FP1, expecting to complete the race preparation during FP2. Unfortunately, an issue within the ERS system of the PU meant that we had to end his FP2 after just a couple of laps on the Hard tyre. We’ll fit a different module to Alex’s car overnight and look to make up for lost time during FP3."

Albon felt the power drain from his Williams

Albon was bitter that he did not get beyond five laps in the second practice session. He said: "We think the issue is battery related; I started my lap and it felt okay but then I just started to lose deployment as I went on the straight. I think we already know the problem so it shouldn’t be too long to fix but around here you want the mileage because it’s such a confidence building circuit."

Still, there were positives too: "Aside from the issue, the car hasn’t felt too bad and I don’t believe we’ll suffer from any penalties, but we’ll have a proper look tonight. With the temperature of the car here this weekend and the lack of running time, we’ll have to do a little bit of guess work tomorrow, but it should be fine going into FP3 tomorrow," said Albon.