“Adaptability” was the name of the game at the Chinese Grand Prix as Williams boss James Vowles reflected on the race.

And, he believes this is where teams like Ferrari and Alpine were potentially tripped up after painful disqualifications.

Chinese GP: Ferrari caught out on strategy?

When the chequered flag flew in Shanghai, Ferrari thought they had bagged a P5 and P6 result, Charles Leclerc ahead of Lewis Hamilton, but this turned into a double disqualification, when after the race, Leclerc’s SF-25 was found to be 1kg underweight, while the skid block on Hamilton’s car had exceeded the maximum permitted amount of wear.

Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was also kicked out of the results due to an underweight car.

That means Ferrari are fifth and level with Williams on 17 points in the Constructors’ standings, as Williams team principal James Vowles gave his assessment of the race in his ‘Vowles Verdict’ video on the team’s website.

Alex Albon was elevated to a P7 finish with the DQs while Carlos Sainz scored his first point with the team, so asked if it took the shine off the result, Vowles replied: “There was a little indication that there might be some trouble elsewhere in the pit lane, as we were sort of wrapping up towards the end of the day in Shanghai.

“But to answer the question directly, no, it doesn’t take the edge off the result whatsoever at all.

“I think what it does demonstrate is that when we’re all fighting in a very similar region, the same tenth or so, you have to get every single detail right in order to be ahead of your competitors and with a car that fully complies with the regulations. And it’s getting tougher and tougher now.

“As a result of it, in that race, in particular, if I go through the detailed changes, we had very significant front graining in that Sprint race, but that mostly disappeared in the race.

“But you had to sort of tune your balance and set-up to be somewhere where you give the adaptability, should either you have graining or it clear up.

“The second aspect is you heard a lot of cars talking about fuel in the race, and that’s because actually when the graining clears up, you’re in a very different situation as to how the fuel consumption changes as a result, too.

“And you saw that strategically, we adapted quite quickly, I think, maybe faster than most, into a one-stop, and others really had to just try and hang on to the tyres towards the end of the race.

“So there’s a lot of adaptability. That also impacts on where the car weight is and where the skid wear is, which is what caught a few of the other teams out.

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“So I’m proud of our team, because whilst we are trying to extract everything from the car as possible, we are getting those fundamentals fairly right.

“But you can see that going forward, we need to just keep eking out and finding performance within this package, whilst not losing focus on our future, and that’s a tough balance to hold.

“But no, it didn’t take the edge off. It just gave me happiness that Carlos got his first point and Alex was rewarded for what I thought was a great race.”

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