Hamilton has picked up a grid penalty while Albon was excluded from the session following a technical infringement.
Albon had qualified an impressive eighth for the Dutch Grand Prix, the Thai-licensed driver Williams’ only representative in the session.
A heavy crash for Logan Sargeant in Free Practice 3 saw the American sidelined as the team worked to repair his car.
However both Williams cars will now start the race from the rear of the grid after Albon’s failed post-qualifying scrutineering.
“The floor body of Car 23 was found to lie outside the regulatory volume mentioned in Article 3.5.1 a) of the FIA Formula One Technical Regulations,” deemed the stewards.
“The team did not dispute the calibration of the FIA measuring system and the measurement of the car, but stated that their own measurements have produced different results.
“The Stewards determine that the result of the measurement conducted with the FIA system in Parc Ferme is the relevant one and the due process prescribed by the regulations has been followed.
“Therefore the standard penalty for such an infringement is applied.”
The standard penalty is exclusion from the classification.
“Unfortunately, Alex has been disqualified from Qualifying today due to his floor body being outside the regulatory volume set by the FIA,” a team spokesperson acknowledged.
“We are incredibly disappointed with this outcome and will be carrying out a thorough investigation and will provide an update soon.”
The floor is one of five new components Williams is debuting in the Netherlands, an item fitted to both cars.
Had Sargeant taken part in the session, he too would have been excluded.
“The floor body is fully updated as part of a completely new floor geometry,” the team declared in its submission regarding the upgrade to the FIA.
“The height of the forward floor is increased, and the fences are reprofiled.
“The floor edges are updated with more pronounced finger geometry.
It added: “We have reprofiled the front of the floor body and the local fence curvatures to offer a local load improvement and to also enhance the onset flow to the new floor edge wing geometry.”
The exclusion of Albon is not the only change to the grid, with Hamilton slapped with a three-place penalty for impeding Sergio Perez.
Perez found his path blocked by the Mercedes driver during Qualifying 1 as they navigated Turn 9, the Red Bull Racing driver on a flying lap while Hamilton was returning to the pits.
It forced Perez to abandon his lap, costing him a set of tyres as he was forced to run again to secure his passage through to Qualifying 2.
Hamilton also progressed, though was eliminated in the second segment, and was initially poised to line up 12th. That will become 14th as a result of the penalty.
“The driver of Car 44, being on an in lap, was informed by the team that Car 11 was approaching on a fast lap when he entered Turn 8,” stewards noted.
“He then drove off line at the exit of Turn 8 with the intention to give way for Car 11.
“However, when Car 11 arrived, Car 44 had already entered Turn 9 and drove back towards the racing line at the exit of Turn 9, thereby clearly impeding Car 11.
“The Stewards determine that, whilst there has been appropriate warning by the team and albeit the driver tried to move out of the way, he could have slowed down more in order not to impede the other car and therefore consider the impeding to be unnecessary in the sense of the regulations.
“Therefore a grid drop is applied in line with previous decisions.”
The combination of Hamilton’s penalty and Albon’s exclusion sees Carlos Sainz move up to 10th on the grid, followed by Yuki Tsunoda in 11th, Nico Hulkenberg in 12th, Kevin Magnussen in 13th, and then Hamilton in 14th.
Daniel Ricciardo will now start the race 15th, while Sargeant has been cleared to start the race despite not setting a time in qualifying.
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