Alexander Albon missed out on the top 10 again on Sunday in Mexico—the Williams driver cannot explain why he has been lacking pace for some time now.
“We need to find out what’s going on,” Alexander Albon demanded after the Mexican Grand Prix. Apart from the sprint in Austin, the Williams driver missed out on the points for the fourth Grand Prix in a row on Sunday.
“We’ve had a few races where we’ve struggled, and we need to figure out where that’s coming from,” said Albon, who finished in the top 10 in seven of the first eight races at the start of the season. Since then, that ratio has completely reversed.
Since Budapest, Albon has lost 0:6 in qualifying duels against his teammate Carlos Sainz, and the Spaniard has also been responsible for Williams’ recent highlights in the races. Sainz finished third in both the Grand Prix in Baku and the sprint in Austin.
Albon, on the other hand, sees himself in a downward spiral that he can’t quite explain. “We can see it in the data, we can identify the problems I’m having with the car,” said Albon, who cannot say where they come from. In Mexico, for example, he never felt comfortable in the car, which is why he was once again eliminated in Q1 in qualifying – as he was in Baku and Austin before that. Sainz, on the other hand, made it into Q3 and put the Williams in P7 – ten places ahead of his teammate. Albon said qualifying had been a “strange session,” as he had struggled with the brakes, among other things. However, he also made it clear: “The brakes were a problem, but you should still be able to make it through Q2.”
“It’s a little difficult to say exactly where the difficulties come from. But there’s a bit of a lack of feeling and confidence,” he said, adding: “In general, there’s also a lack of speed.” In other words, Albon is simply too slow at the moment.
He doesn’t want to use the fact that Williams stopped developing the FW47 months ago as an excuse. “No, because no one is really bringing any updates anymore. It’s all about pure speed, and I don’t really know where that’s coming from,” he emphasizes. “It’s a bit confusing,” says Albon, who scored a whopping 42 championship points in the first eight races of the season. In the twelve races that followed, he added only 31 more, and in the last four of those, only three through P6 in the Austin sprint.
“That’s why we need to regroup, reassess the situation, and start a good recovery process before Brazil so we can get back into the rhythm,” Albon demands.
