REPORT: A tough evening under the Las Vegas lights

The 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix failed to yield points for the team on Saturday evening, after Alex Albon was forced to retire with a radiator issue, while Franco Colapinto battled hard for a P14 finish.

The Argentinian's performance – after he started from the pit lane following changes to the setup of his car during the rebuild after Qualifying – reflected the FW46's strength, but unfortunately points proved a bridge too far.

Alex was showing very strong pace, and was into the top ten when he suffered a power unit issue, believed to have been caused by a piece of plastic being caught in his radiator.

It was a desperately unfortunate end to what had been a superb recovery drive after the Thai driver qualified in P18 on Friday night.

Focus now will turn to Qatar and the beginning of an all Middle Eastern double header, to bring the 2024 Formula 1 World Championship to a close, and the team will be working extra hard to secure points to see out the season.

"It was a tough weekend," Franco reflected. "Qualifying yesterday was feeling very good, and I was getting more and more comfortable but then I started the lap too close to Gasly, had a very messy last corner and unfortunately finished with a lot of damage.

"From where we started in the pit lane today, we were able to make some progress and, overall, did a good job.

"It was difficult to manage the tyres as we had a lot of graining. I must say a huge thank you to the garage team, who have been the heroes of the last couple of races.

"They had to rebuild a whole car yesterday for me to race today and it’s amazing how good they are.

"They are the best out there and I’m very grateful. We know more opportunities are coming next week in Qatar and we will bounce back."

Alex continued our reaction by adding: "We had a good car today and could’ve scored some good points, so it’s frustrating to retire with a suspected PU issue.

"We need to understand whether it was a similar problem to FP2 or the same issue we had in Singapore, but we’ll go away and try to get to the bottom of it.

"We’ve experienced some hard times this year, so we have to stay strong.

"From my side, these things happen but I wanted a good result for the team to try to repay everyone for the hard work they’ve put in during these really tough times.

"It wasn’t meant to be, so we’ll try to put our focus on the last two races of the season and hopefully, we can turn things around."

Sven Smeets, Sporting Director, concluded our evening reaction by saying: "Firstly, it was a fantastic job by the team in the garage again to get Franco’s car ready to race and I want to thank each and every one of them for their determination and hard work.

"Both cars were running well at the start of the race but frustratingly we had to retire Alex’s car, despite points being on the table. We will go away and investigate what caused the PU problem.

"Franco put in a decent recovery drive, but we couldn’t make it into the top 10 having started from the pit lane.

"We now look forward to Qatar where the Sprint format will give us two chances to score points."