For Alex Albon and Oliver Bearman, the FP1 session came to a quick end with a collision in Turn 9 on the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit. Albon was on the run-up to the high-speed sequence of Turns 7, 8 and 9, where Bearman was driving a Ferrari car at a considerably slower speed. The Williams driver lifted off in anticipation of him, which caused the car to lose grip, it began to snap and resulted in Albon hitting Bearman and ending up in the wall in Turn 10 himself.
Immediately after, Albon called Bearman an “idiot” over the radio, surely still very much full of adrenaline and emotions. However, after cooling off and undoubtedly reviewing the accident, he changed his mind.
“I think he got told, listening to the radio, very late that I was coming up behind him,” Albon pointed out.
“He tried his best to speed up into the two or three high-speed corners, we caught each other at the worst moment on track that you can. I think there was a 100 km/h difference in terms of speed.”
“I don’t blame myself, but I don’t think it’s all on Ollie.”
Bearman took part in this session as a rookie driver in Charles Leclerc’s SF-24. As Ferrari’s and Haas’ reserve driver, he already got the chance to take part in two Formula 1 Grand Prix weekends this year — replacing Carlos Sainz in Saudi Arabia and recently stepping up instead of Kevin Magnussen in Azerbaijan. However, that still doesn’t mean he’s not new in the F1 car, which is something Albon also takes into consideration.
“I think he could have been told a bit better, and of course he’s new, the closing speeds in F1 are much higher than F2. But it’s not his fault,” the Anglo-Thai driver concluded on this matter.
And as did the stewards who investigated the incident, deciding there’s no further action needed. The report stated that “both drivers agreed that Bearman’s positioning was not unreasonable, but was unfortunate as it was close to Albon’s line. Had Bearman been slightly further down the track it would not have resulted in an incident. All parties agreed that it was a racing incident.”
Unfortunately, the aftermath of this collision was severe for Albon and the mechanics trying to fix the Williams car, not doing so in time for FP2. Therefore, the driver could not take part in the session which was not only a chance to gather data for the Qualifying and the Race, but also a special Pirelli tyre test.
“Two laps is frustrating — we’ve got a lot of work to do [on Saturday],” Albon commented, obviously not happy with the lack of running he got so far.
“But hopefully [FP2 is] less important than a normal weekend, obviously FP2 was a Pirelli test. So in some ways, possibly less learned from other teams because they weren’t running tyres from this year.
“I’m hoping that it just means the lack of track time is less compromising,” he said.
