Williams had their finest day of the 2024 season at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as Alex Albon and the incredibly impressive rookie Franco Colapinto finished in P7 and P8, giving them ten valuable points and moving them ahead of Alpine in the Constructors’ Championship.
The Thai explained how pleased he was with their weekend’s work.
“Yes, I think we’re in front of Alpine now, which was the target at the end of the year.
“I think we were talking before about how difficult P10 and P9 was [on Thursday], so to get a P7 and a P8 is luxurious. We’ll take that.
“It shows that we’ve made great progress with the upgrade. Again, that’s another points finish, that’s another weekend where we’ve been positively quick, I think very similar to the Aston Martin in terms of pace.
“Let’s see next week, but for this weekend it’s been very strong.”
Albon was the only driver in the top 10 who started on hards, meaning he did a long first stint. He ran in P9 in the opening stages, but that would become P2 for a brief moment once all the main runners had pitted.
After pitting, he passed Hülkenberg and Colapinto to work his way up to P9. The late crash between Sergio Pérez and Carlos Sainz allowed him to gain another two spots.
He doesn’t believe the strategy paid off, however.
“If I could say, we did a different strategy to pretty much the majority of the grid. I don’t think it was a quick strategy in the end.
“The reason for that was the amount of time we lost with the top teams in that midfield fight, when I was getting overtaken by everyone, Oscar, Charles and Checo I think.
“It was six or seven seconds of race time. That would have put us quite easily in front of Fernando I think on a race pace, but that was actually because we were too quick.
“We thought they were going to come out in front of us and I would have carried on my own race, but actually they came out behind me, so [it was] great in some ways.
“I’m really happy.”
As the two-time podium finisher explained afterwards, getting involved in the lead battle was not ideal. He was overtaken by Piastri, Pérez and Sainz in the space of a few laps, meaning his own race time was hampered.
He could not run at his own pace, was picking up dirty air, and the 28-year-old naturally lost lap time as cars passed him
“I wasn’t trying to race them [the top cars], I was trying to reduce as much lap time loss as possible, but it was almost identical to blue flags because I had worn tyres and then I was getting all the dirty air.
“I was losing a lot of tyre temperature when I was fighting them, so actually it wasn’t that enjoyable.
“I was hoping they would pull away a little bit quicker.”
On a very positive note, Albon was able to fend off Lando Norris on the same hard-medium strategy through the first stint as both drivers remained in front of Max Verstappen and George Russell before boxing.
Nonetheless, he was left to wonder if extending his hard stint might have worked better to jump Fernando Alonso as he felt the tyres coming back to him just before he pitted.
“I think it was great [to stay ahead of Norris].
“When I came out of the pits and I saw that Fernando was only maybe two seconds in front of me, when I came out I realised, you know what, I don’t know how my pace was just before I pitted, but my tyres just came alive literally the lap before I pitted, which was almost a shame. I think if I carried on I might have been able to overcut.
“To be able to fight McLaren, that’s great.”
Although he got close, Albon could not launch an attack at the end on Alonso for P6 as the VSC appeared.
Albon explained how drivers went through a graining phase on the hards before it cleaned up again.
The Aston Martin was a rocket on the straights in Baku, meaning it would have virtually impossible to overtake anyway.
“I think the hard tyre was pretty much better throughout the race. But there was a grainy moment in the middle for quite a lot of drivers and they must have got past that.”
“So when he started pushing on, I thought, yeah, he’s going through the same thing I went through 20 laps ago. So I did expect it.
“I would like to have seen [if I could have had a go], because I’d just got within DRS as the crash happened, but I don’t [know], to be honest with you, it’s not that easy to overtake Fernando, and he was on a lower rear wing, so I don’t think it would have been that easy.”
Albon was also asked about Franco Colapinto’s outstanding performance. The 21-year-old had been pushing the Thai all the way through practice and qualifying as tiny margins either way separated them.
In the race, Albon had pulled a 10-second gap before the VSC as experience ultimately prevailed. He noted how they could try two different strategies as they had the cars close together on the grid this weekend for the first time in quite a long period.
A double points finish for Williams was huge, and it suddenly gives them a bit of hope that catching RB and Haas is possible if they can continue this form.
“Yeah, to be honest, I didn’t see much of his race. We were kind of a little bit split up.
“Coming in and seeing him finishing in position behind me, it’s great.
“It’s great for us in the Constructors’ [Championship] obviously as well. It means a lot to us.
“So he’s come in, he’s been quick straight away.
“We tried, having two cars in Q3, a split strategy, tried to outfox the Aston, and unfortunately it didn’t work.
“But it’s great to have that option.”
