Williams is still puzzling over tires, and Alexander Albon fears that tires will continue to be the dominant topic this weekend in Baku.
“I have a feeling it will be a similar story to Monza, where we will be talking about tires all weekend,” predicts Williams driver Alexander Albon ahead of this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku.
Albon finished a respectable seventh in the last race in Italy. However, in Saturday’s qualifying, he had already missed out on Q3 for the third time in a row. And at Williams, there is currently almost always the same topic after qualifying: tires.
“The biggest problem for me this year has probably been getting the tires to work,” confirms Albon’s teammate Carlos Sainz, who explains: “The only problem we have is this randomness in tire preparation that we have on certain tracks.”
“Sometimes it’s not about tire preparation at all, but about how much a new tire changes the balance of the car. Even when the tire is working well, we are slower with a new soft than with a used medium, and we don’t know why,” reports the Spaniard.
“Our car simply has a weakness, especially when it comes to tire preparation, but also in terms of the balance that a new tire gives the car, and sometimes we’re not as fast as we should be with the tire on the first lap. So there are two different issues,” said Sainz.
Williams wants to try “everything possible” on Friday
On the one hand, it’s about getting the tires into the right working window, which is a challenge for all Formula 1 teams. At Williams, however, the situation is made more difficult by the fact that even when this window is hit, the tires sometimes still don’t perform optimally.
“Once the tires are warm and where they should be, we’re in a good position,” Albon emphasizes, explaining: “I think that’s part of the reason why our race pace is so strong. That’s why we’re fast in the race and why we’re slow in qualifying.”
“We had a little over a week [after Monza] to think about it and prepare for this weekend,” Albon emphasizes, explaining: “We have different setups, outlaps, and all kinds of things to try.”
That was also the case in Monza, but according to Albon, they ended up going too far. “Looking back, I think we should have stopped experimenting in qualifying,” said the 29-year-old. But in Italy, they were still trying things out “during qualifying.”
Albon hopes for qualifying “without chaos”
This time, such experiments will be limited to Friday. “There will be another adjustment for the third free practice session, and then hopefully we’ll just stick to our strategy and say: We have something, it’s not perfect, but we have something,” said Albon. “We have a consistent plan that we can follow, and then we can go into qualifying without chaos,” he hopes, adding: “This weekend, we’re pursuing a slightly different philosophy. We’re trying not to focus solely on the tires themselves.”
Instead, he said, they are “also looking at the setup and how we can design the setup so that the tires work better. That will be interesting,“ emphasizes Albon, who also explains why the problems with the tires have made life so difficult for Williams in qualifying recently.
At the start of the season, they simply had a bigger lead over the other teams in the midfield. ”Even if our tires weren’t fantastic, we could still advance quite comfortably to Q3 or Q2,” says Albon. That is no longer possible.
Baku should suit Williams “on paper”
“On paper, this track should suit us,” says Albon about the circuit in Baku, where the race will be held this weekend. However, the street circuit is also “one of the most difficult [tracks] to get the tires to work.”
Because there are very long straights and many 90-degree corners in Baku, it is difficult to get energy into the tires. “Here, you only brake on the straights. And when you drive into a corner, you’re going 100 kilometers per hour,” explains Albon.
So it’s no comparison to the fast corners on other tracks such as Suzuka or Silverstone. “There’s a fast left-hand corner before Sector 3. And then come the last two corners,” says Albon, naming the only fast corners in Baku.
“On most tracks,” says the Williams driver, there are “many more” of these fast corners, which are needed to get the tires up to temperature. “So it’s going to be a challenge,” he believes.
