Williams have been punished for a breach of F1's Sporting Regulations after a tyre error was discovered on Alex Albon's side of the garage. The Williams cars of Albon and Nicholas Latifi were eliminated from Q1 at the Hungaroring, qualifying 17th and 20th respectively. During the opening part of qualifying, Albon was ruled to have used a set of tyres which had been "electronically returned". Over the course of a race weekend, tyres are handed back to Pirelli after practice and qualifying sessions, and teams can only use tyres from their remaining allocation. Following a meeting with the stewards, it was determined that there was an "administrative lapse" from Williams, who failed to declare the correct reference number of a tyre set.
Williams handed fine for regulation breach
The stewards' statement suggested that because Williams had still physically handed back a set of tyres, albeit the wrong set, a fine would be a sufficient penalty, rather than any qualifying or grid penalty. The stewards issued a statement confirming that Williams would receive a €1000 fine for the mistake: "The stewards heard from the team representative of Car 23 (Alexander Albon) and the Technical Delegate and determined that due to an administrative lapse, the team had incorrectly indicated the reference number of the set of tyres that they were returning to the tyre manufacturer, within the time specified in the regulations. "The Technical Delegate confirmed that this was likely to have been an administrative error on the part of the team as a set of unused physical tyres were returned within time, per the regulations. "As this was nevertheless a technical breach of the regulations, we imposed a fine of €1,000 on the team."
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