Williams driver Alex Albon continued his fine season with a P6 finish in the F1 Belgian GP. It moves him on to 54 points in the standings, just 9 behind Kimi Antonelli who sits P7.
After a deployment issue basically took him out of the Sprint part of the weekend with a SQ1 exit, the Thai bounced back in style to qualify 5th for the Grand Prix, beating good friend George Russell to it in Q3.
On race day the Mercedes driver passed him in the wet, before a 32-lap stint on mediums holding off Lewis Hamilton in the Ferrari saw Albon take 6th. A 12.1s gap to Liam Lawson showed how strong Williams were in race pace.
Alex Albon delighted following F1 Belgian GP
“Yeah, very happy.
“Not easy to hold off Lewis, and he gave me a lot of pressure for a long part of the race.
“In some ways a bit annoyed to have given a position up to George, but to be honest with you I think we struggle a little bit more in the wet than we do in the dry. Once we put the dry tyres on we were okay.
“I’m happy. I think we were finished 12 seconds or so in front of the next midfield car, which is a good statement of intent from us, and it shows that our package was working well this weekend.
Williams back to regular points finishes?
A P6 from Alex Albon, along with a 6th from Williams teammate Carlos Sainz in the Sprint gave the Grove-based squad 11 points from the F1 Belgian GP weekend. They extended their lead over 6th placed Sauber to 27 points.
Following cooling issues for the Thai, along with various problems for the 4-time race winner, Williams looks to be slowly getting back to the form they had earlier in the year.
Alex Albon is confident they can continue to regularly fight for points as the car has proven to the fast on pretty much every kind of circuit.
“I think realistically, if we would have finished almost every race we would have scored points in every race, and that’s a really good trait to have. It means the DNA of the car is consistent, and we’re not peaking [at certain types of tracks].
“I think we’re the most consistent midfield team, and we can go to every weekend knowing that we can score points as long as we finish the race.
“So, we seem to have got a good containment for the moment with the issues that we had before, and now we can get back to scoring some good points.”
Alex Albon on the delayed start of the F1 Belgian GP
Following very strong opinions from Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen that the race should have got going sooner, Alex Albon was in agreement with them.
Despite rain coming down through most of the morning and early afternoon at Spa, only 11 full racing laps were completed before drivers swapped to dry tyres.
“I do [believe an earlier start was possible]. By the time we actually started, it was almost slicks. Not sure if it would have changed too much. Maybe it would have made the race a bit more exciting, to have a bit longer of a wet stint in the race”
