Williams’ Alex Albon disappointed as he breaks down his struggles throughout a difficult F1 Hungarian GP weekend for the Grove-based outfit.
Following a point-less Hungarian Grand Prix weekend for Williams, Alex Albon explains the conditions which caused the team’s poor performance. Having expected a difficult weekend given the track characteristics of the Hungaroring, Williams failed to progress to Q3 on Saturday and were unable to crack the top ten on Sunday.
Having started from P19, last on the grid, Albon had plenty of work to do during the Grand Prix. Speaking after the Grand Prix in Budapest, Albon reflected on a strong start but ultimate lack of race pace.
“I had a decent start, probably the best launch I’ve had all year,” the Williams man recalled while speaking in the print media pen. “Made up a couple of positions, started on the soft tyre. Soft tyres held on better than I thought they would and we were looking pretty competitive. We had a great pit stop and undercut the Haas and then that’s kind of where the race ended.
“I think Carlos [Sainz] came out in front of me. I was on the mediums, the mediums [degraded] pretty poorly and then the hards were actually, I think, a better race tyre. I don’t know if that was just me or if that’s everyone, but the hards were quite a lot better than the mediums. But then I got stuck into a DRS train for the race.”
Albon went on to recall he had higher expectations for the Hungarian GP than their results produced. Expanding on his difficult weekend, he admitted the high downforce spec of the FW47 struggled with balance issues.
Looking back to qualifying, Albon also noted tyre difficulties as a factor en route to his P20 qualifying result. Despite this, he summed up the difficult weekend as a general lack of pace from the car.
“Not much to say. I think as a weekend goes, pretty disappointed,” he continued. “I went into this weekend with our upgrade more optimistic than the pace that we showed this weekend. I think we were troubled on tyres in qualifying now that we look at it and in the race we honestly just didn’t have the pace.
“When I look at us on the high downforce rear wing, we don’t seem to be able to get the balance that we can get on the medium and low speed car. It’s not like previous years where we’ve just been good on low downforce, it’s just that we don’t have the balance at the moment with a high downforce car.
“We need to improve that, but we don’t have an upgrade. A really scrappy weekend and it didn’t feel good at all.”
When pushed on his Qualifying performance in comparison to his teammate, A disappointed Albon was surprised by the track temperature. Despite this, he once again claimed an overall lack of pace during the Hungarian Grand Prix was the main factor.
“The tyres are king and the track temp dropping in quali caught me out,” Albon admitted. “It’s on me because Carlos figured it out and I didn’t. But I find new tyres can hide some issues and in the long runs it exposed us and then our pure pace came through. So there’s still an element of not just tyres, there’s a certain element that the car’s not quite there.”
