Alex Albon endured a challenging 2025 F1 US GP, finishing outside the points in 14th despite a strong start to the weekend.
The Williams driver looked competitive early on, placing 6th in FP1 and qualifying 9th for the Sprint, during which he finished 6th. However, during the main race qualifying, Albon exceeded track limits in his final run in Q1 and started P19.
Lap 1 troubles
On the opening lap, Albon attempted to get past Stroll on the inside of Turn 12; unfortunately, he then hit the rear tyre of Bortoleto, causing the Thai to spin and drop to P20.
After the US GP race, he commented on the incident by saying, “Yeah, I think the incident itself was just a bit of like a… I don’t know how it looked, but to me it was just a bit awkward. Like Oscar in Turn 1 and cutting back and no one’s fault, but just… Yeah, I don’t… I think it was just one of those things. So, had a little trip around, did a 360.”
Albon started on hard tyres in the F1 US GP, he pitted for mediums on Lap 8, and eventually made his way up to P10, but lost the position having had to pit again for softs on Lap 38. “We were on the hard tyre and I think it was Isack, Esteban and myself and we… that tyre, that belonged in the truck. So, we tried to get rid of it, but effectively by getting rid of it, we were almost a pit stop behind to start the race with.”
He added: “So, we recovered quite well actually and our pace was not bad once we had clear air, but yeah, tricky. A weekend to forget for me, just felt a little bit out of rhythm and never really comfortable with the car, chasing the balance throughout the weekend. And I think in a sprint race weekend when you need to hit the ground running, I didn’t. So, hopefully Mexico is a bit smoother.”
“We just need to get back into our rhythm”
Albon’s 2025 F1 season with Williams has had its highs and lows. He has scored points in 11 out of the 19 current races, but has also faced some tough moments, such as three DNFs in a row across Spain, Canada, and Austria. In the last three races, Albon scored points in Monza as he finished 7th, but then finished outside of the points in Baku, 13th, and Singapore, 14th.
When asked how he feels about these mixed results, Albon said, “I think we just need to get back into our rhythm. I think in many ways, just we’ve had a lot of technical issues in a row, really like a weird amount in the last few races and we’ve done a lot of differen thtings, fixed a lot of problems, but just seems like, I don’t know why, we’re constantly repairing things rather than kind of just having a good rhythm with the car and just chipping away at it.”
He concluded: “So to be fair to you, qualifying yesterday and today, the car’s fine. There’s no issues with it, but just that rhythm hasn’t been there the last few weekends and we just need to kind of reset, make sure everything’s working and then we’ll be okay.”
