British GP: Williams drivers to start from pit lane

Williams Martini drivers Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin will be required to start the 2018 British Grand Prix from the pitlane. This has come about due to the fact that the team had been forced to replace the new rear wings on both FW41s.

The issue with the new rear wing became apparent when both drivers would spin spun off in the opening period of qualifying when they experienced aerodynamic stalls after the DRS was deactivated. It would seem that the issue was with how the new rear wing interacted with the floor. As a result the team decided to revert to the previous wing design. other parts would also be changed as part of the return to the older specification rear wing.

Any change in the specification of the car| after qualifying requires the cars to start from the pit lane. Prior to the change Sirotkin and Stroll were due to start 18th and 19th respectively.

Technical Chief Paddy Lowe said: "We brought in some new pieces [on Friday] and we need to do more work."

"We have an intermittent problem with the floor stall, related only to DRS. It doesn't recover well enough for the subsequent corner.

"We can only assume now that it's related to the new pieces even though we did a proper introduction and seemed to have a stable platform as we finished FP2 yesterday.

"The phenomenon is something we've never seen before on this car or indeed any other. We have the rear wing, our previous rear wing, which is absolutely fine in this aspect."