Photo credit: Williams Racing
After five straight races at street circuits Formula One returned to the more controlled environment of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, and after periodic flirtation with the midfield Williams returned to the bottom of the order at the Spanish Grand Prix. Alexander Albon and Logan Sargeant qualified 18th and 20th, and neither gained significant progress, if any, with Albon finishing 16th and Sargeant remaining in last place.
Albon noted that while the field was leveled somewhat at the non-permanent circuits, especially at testing favorite Barcelona there was less opportunity to find an unusual advantage.
“We were on unique street tracks with characteristics where with confidence and driving, you can do a little bit. Around here, where every team’s done a million laps and every driver’s done a million laps, it’s very hard to break the trend and outperform it.”
Meanwhile, Sargeant was as optimistic about his race as one can be when finishing 20th, but noted that there was still time lost in the final segment of the race that would need to be found moving forward.
“The first two stints went better than I was expecting.[…] That was a positive first three quarters of the race. But[…] the last stint didn’t go well. Don’t really know why, just couldn’t find the pace, lack of grip, quite a lot of tyre deg. So not sure why this variation from stint to stint, we’ll have to understand that.”
Albon and Williams are looking forward to some upgrades down the pipeline that may get them back into points contention. How far down the pipeline remains to be seen, however.
“We’ve got some upgrades coming, hopefully sooner rather than later. Hopefully, once we get that increased performance, we can fight in the midfield a bit more again like we were more at the start of the year.”
