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The rain at the Interlagos GP not only caused racing “chaos” last Sunday, but also financial chaos. Read how much accidents cost the teams too much – almost half of which was borne by the Williams team.
Everything was going well until the Sprint race at noon on Saturday (2/11), as part of the Brazilian GP, the 21st of this year’s three-day Formula 1 race at the Interlago circuit.
However, the same afternoon the deluge in the Sao Paulo area forced the organizers to postpone the qualifying tests until the following morning, a few hours before the Brazilian GP.
Sunday was also rainy, and both qualifying and the race were held in ever-changing grip conditions as the rain fluctuated.
This, unsurprisingly, also brought a series of accidents: qualifying was stopped 5 times with red flags, while the race saw three driver crashes into the barriers – one of which, by Franco Colapinto, was red flagged.
Understandably, this was the race with the most accidents of this year’s Formula 1 season, and consequently the race with the greatest financial losses for the sports teams.
The cost, according to the Dutch website F1Maximal.nl, amounted to the incredible amount of 5,030,800 euros for the teams. Of this amount, almost half was borne by Williams, for the accidents of Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto: 2,296,800 euros.
Albon’s crash in qualifying on Sunday morning, when the Anglo-Thai hit the white line at the entrance to Turn 1 and lost control, was the worst of the five.
The incident reportedly cost the team €800,000 in damage, as well as Albon’s participation in the race – as the damage could not be repaired within hours.
Instead, Grove’s team managed to patch up Colapinto’s FW46 from the Argentine’s crash in qualifying – but just hours later the 21-year-old suffered his worst crash of the race in 32nd when he crashed into the outside barriers at turn one.
The Williams FW46’s nose and front wing, front and rear suspensions, floor and side vents were broken in the incident. For all this, the bill rose to 1,490,200 euros.
As if all that wasn’t enough for Williams, the English team suffered another blow in the standings: Alpine’s incredible double podium with Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly.
That double podium catapulted the French team from 9th to 6th in the standings, with Williams dropping from 8th to 9th – meaning a multi-million dollar difference in TV rights at the end of the season.
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