Williams’ Alex Albon was definitely not pleased with the outcome of his F1 Dutch GP Qualifying, as he didn’t manage to advance to Q3.
The British-Thai driver had breezed through the first Qualifying segment, securing a comfortable P6 on pace after a difficult Friday which had seen him spun out during FP1. However, the earlier difficulties found their way through Q2 as well, with some unfortunate help from his team.
Hard to get the FW47 in the right operational conditions
In fact, Albon pins his starting P15 on going out on track for his final push lap in the F1 Dutch GP at the wrong moment, causing him to get blocked by many colleagues and miss out on the best tyre conditions. In fact, he said after the end of Qualifying.
“We’ve been struggling with outlaps all weekend. We just need clean air to do outlaps. It’s not really, I don’t want to complain, but we ended up queuing behind a few cars for three or so minutes to come out of the garage.
“There’s a lot of traffic at the outlaps, we’ve sunk the last outlap, which matters, completely out the window. We just need to review it, we obviously didn’t do it on purpose, but we ended up contradicting ourselves a little bit. We didn’t have a tyre, we were on the edge of the tyres and then we went out and didn’t give the tyres any juice.“
It’s even more frustrating for Albon as he knows his FW47 had the potential for more in store, considering his two top 10 results out of three Practice sessions as well as his teammate Carlos Sainz’s starting P9.
“We’ve been quick all weekend. We’ve been quick in quality, we’ve been quick in Q1, we’ve been quick in the beginning of Q2. We just had to do a normal lap and we were doing fine.“
Only the tyres ruined his Saturday afternoon
Asked if there might have been other factors involved in his missed occasion, such as an increase in wind speed, Albon denied, insisting it had all come down to tyre usage Williams had caused themselves and mentioning the troubles Sainz as well had encountered previously
“Just giving us the tyres. I think Carlos struggled in Q1 with the tyres too, I was feeling quite comfortable. In Q1, again, I was feeling quite comfortable. And then in Q2, we just queued for too long. Long story short, we did the opposite one at the time.“
He went into detail to explain how the lack of feeling with his tyres impacted partciularly the first turns he completed in Zandvoort.
“I don’t feel the pressure. It’s not pressure. It’s more just that I go into Turn 1 and I almost got the track. I go into Turn 2, I almost slide over the track. It’s just pure grip, and when you start like that, you can’t recover it back. So that’s it really.
“I think if we had a look at what we could have done better in qualifying, it was possibly to do a little bit like Mercedes. They went out quite early for the Q2 round to maybe get a bit more clean air and do our own thing. But that’s just it for now.“
Something to work on for the team at Grove
He also explained that the main aspect which is affected by the lack of proper tyre preparation is tyre grip, which consequently didn’t allow Albon to unlock his complete potential in F1 Dutch GP Qualifying.
“Yes, it’s the same for everyone, so we need to figure it out. I think, in general, our issue is not our strategy, it’s just we have a very small window where we get our tyres to work. When you have a small window, it’s harder to get it. We need everything to go right to get it to work.
“There are some teams out there that can do a fast start, lap a start, it doesn’t matter, they have the grip in Turn 1. For us, it matters a lot and that’s why. You see, if it’s not in the window, it’s out the window. It looks like the drivers complain a lot, and it is true, but it makes a massive difference.”
Williams is also aware of their tyre issues as a team, as Albon admitted it’s an area the Grove-based team should be focusing on while working on upgrades.
“Yeah, we’re sensitive with tyres. We have been for a year and we need a perfect outline for the tyres to work. As a team, we need to understand why we’re so sensitive, but it just means our performance is fluctuating so much.“
The former Red Bull driver doesn’t have at this point much hope for the upcoming race in Zandvoort, concluding: “I don’t know. We’re kind of out of contention straight away, so I’m hoping for some rain.“
