Alex Albon added another two points to his total in 2023 as he finished P9 in the United States on Sunday thanks to the disqualifications of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc post-race.
However, he was far from happy with things in regards to track limits. Albon was the only driver to receive a track limit penalty on Sunday afternoon. It didn’t affect his final position on the road, nonetheless.
The Thai was left extremely irritated by this consistent issue.
“I get frustrated with it. I had one strike whole race and then the next lap I had three strikes. I went from one warning to an instant penalty.
“You could stay in the limits. But we’ve talked about it before – it’s really hard to tell.
Albon was also left to pender whether the system in place is too slow at finding track limit violations and handing out lap time deletions and warnings.
The FIA’s official document on track limit violations shows Albon got times deleted at 14:28, 15:23, 15:25, 15:28 and 15:20. The last four were all in a row, suggesting the one at 15:20 was picked up very late.
“Either they’re so far behind or something is going on.
“If they don’t give you a warning and then suddenly chuck you three in a row, I don’t think that’s also that fair.
“If they’re behind on their systems, maybe they need to put their hand up and say something or tell us ‘we’ve been slow’ and give you a bit more leeway on it.”
Albon did have a relatively good race on Sunday in spite of his penalty. Starting P16 because of a disappointing qualifying for the team on Friday, he gained five spots in the Grand Prix.
The 27-year-old explained that the race was compromised by using their last new set of mediums for the sprint, and it was very much a case of finishing ahead of Alfa Romeo and Haas on the day as they look to maintain P7 in the Constructors’ Championship.
Such was the lack of pace on hards, the Thai suspects a M-M-S strategy could have been better.
“We didn’t have any new mediums, and that killed our race because mediums were so much better than the hards.
“Our first stint was okay but it wasn’t as quick as yesterday just because we were on a used set.
“We put on the hards quite early on. Maybe a medium-medium-soft race would have been better than a medium-hard-medium.
“I was stuck in traffic the whole race with Zhou. And then we tried to box super early just to get some clean air and stay in front of Bottas in that final stint.
“But [I was on] a medium tyre compared to a hard tyre. The degradation was enormous. It was a very old tyre.”
Ultimately it turned into a very fruitful Sunday for Williams as they collected three points from the race, moving themselves ten clear of Alfa Romeo in the Constructors’ Championship battle.
Photo credit: Williams Racing
