Last weekend the Dutch Grand Prix was held at the legendary Zandvoort circuit. It was a race in which the rain was present, which was the trigger for a chaotic and entertaining day.
Two-time world champion and hometown hero, Max Verstappen, achieved his ninth consecutive victory and his 11th of the season. The improvements in Aston Martin and the good driving of Fernando Alonso saw the British team return to the podium with a second place. While an unfortunate speeding penalty in the pit lane for Sergio Perez saw the final podium spot go to Pierre Gasly, quite unusual for the French team.
However, we will not be talking about any of these drivers, but about Alex Albon and Williams.
The Grove-based team was already showing good indications of their good pace that they had over the weekend in free practice. In qualifying, the Thai driver managed a superb fourth position to start Sunday’s race. However the intensity of the rain early on was unexpected for the team and Albon dropped to P15 in the first few laps as he stayed out.
Albon did not change from his original soft tyres until lap 44, and then switched to inters on lap 61, where it started to pour again. The Thai wasn’t the only driver to surprise with his performance over the weekend, his teammate Logan Sargeant also made it through to Q3, showing that the car overall felt good for both drivers.
In the race, Albon believes they could match Aston Martin and Ferrari on pace, all while managing the tyre nicely to control the degradation.
“I think we were on par with the Astons and Ferraris this weekend.
“We did that first stint and in the whole stint we maybe lost two seconds to the Aston and the Ferrari in front of us. And we were on 15-lap, 10-lap older tyres than they were,” Albon stated.
Photo Credit: Williams Racing
“It was very easy to control the front degradation, the rear deg, just with tools and driving. I was always able to shift the balance where I needed it to be. Then we put on the mediums and then we were making our way up the order. We’ve been here on pace this weekend, there’s no mistake about it.
“It’s been our strongest weekend, it’s the best I’ve felt in the car in my time at Williams and there’s so many positives to take from here.
“We were very strong and we overtook a Mercedes. Of course we had a tyre adventage, but to overtake a car around this track you need a good second-and-a-half pace advantage to be able to do it, and we did it.
“It gives me a lot of confidence going into Monza.”
For Williams’ team principal, James Vowles, not everything was perfect over the weekend as the strategy department got it wrong early in the race. As we already mentioned, Albon started the race in fourth position after a brilliant qualifying session. Early in the race, rain started pouring and Williams decided to keep Albon on slick tyres, which was the mistake Vowles comments on.
“You either stop on lap one or lap two, or you stay out. And the real wrong that a number of teams did is then stop after that point,” Vowles said.
Photo Credit: Williams Racing
“The reason why we didn’t stop was on the radar initially it didn’t look like it was going to be as bad as it was. Now, clearly, the losses were quite significant to inter runners,” Williams’ team principal commented. “You still saw us come back into a points position. It’s not outlandishly terrible, but it was the wrong decision.”
According to Vowles, the second pit stop call was also wrong as they hesitated to come into the pits since the rain returned. Many of the drivers came in to change their slick tyres for wet ones a lap before him and the Thai lost out to Hamilton, Russell and Norris. This was what James Vowles commented on this decision.
“The second stop as well, coming in for those inters, again, that was wrong. That was one lap late.
“On all of these the key point is to reflect on it. We know it’s one lap late, that’s the easy but the hard bit is how in hindsight, with all the information you have, can you pull that back and do a better decision with it?”
For his part, Alex Albon commented that he and the team have to improve in this type of decisions for future occasions.
“We need to review that second pitstop call. It’s so tricky because I didn’t pit and for the first half lap, I thought ‘perfect, I’ve actually overcut everyone right now’. I’ve overcut the two cars in front of me, because sector one and midway through sector two was still dry.
“And then within 10 seconds, we went from a slick to a full wet tyre. And I was crawling in the last four corners, and we lost out to Lando and George on the undercut,” Albon affirmed. “It feels like we finished today slightly disappointed that we didn’t finish sixth, but we still finished eighth. It’s still an amazing result for us.”
