The 2025 season continues in China, and this weekend’s sprint format threw plenty of curveballs at the drivers, and among them, Alex Albon of Williams secured P10 in qualifying in Shanghai for the 2025 F1 Chinese GP.
Sprint struggles reveal the weaknesses of the FW47
Albon started strong in the Sprint Shootout, qualifying P9. But the Sprint race didn’t go his way. He slipped back to P11 by the chequered flag, struggling with front graining on a circuit that exposed some of the car’s limitations.
“It’s been interesting,” Albon said after main qualifying. “It’s not been an easy track for us. I don’t think it suited us—definitely not a track like Bahrain or Melbourne. Long corners and getting the feeling with the car, the through corner balance, it feels like it exposed us a little bit this weekend.”
Around the Shanghai International Circuit, tyre management is becoming critical, and with a lack of a good front end Williams found themselves in trouble.
“Around here, when you have front graining, any lack of front is amplified, and we were really punished,” the Thai driver explained. “It feels like when we’re not graining, we’re fine and can keep up with the midfield. But once we hit that graining phase earlier than everyone else bar maybe the Haas in the Sprint race, we suffer.”
Big changes between Sprint and quali
Heading into the main qualifying session later that afternoon, Albon and the team made significant changes to the car’s set-up. While it helped, he admitted there’s still work to do.
As the Thai pointed out, teammate Carlos Sainz was forced to box in the Sprint because of how bad the degradation was on mediums for them.
“You don’t see it that much in the low fuel pace, but you see it more in the high fuel pace.
“I mean Carlos was a good example this morning. We had huge deg, he pitted and still had deg. We’ve got some work to do.
“We’ve made a lot of set-up changes between the sprint race and main quali, which went in the right direction. But honestly, I don’t think it’s enough. I think we’re going to struggle still tomorrow.”
Fighting for every tenth
Despite the challenges, Albon delivered when it mattered. On a day when the midfield battle was really close, he pushed the car into Q3—an achievement he didn’t take for granted.
Ocon, Hülkenberg and Alonso all got within in a tenth of his time in Q2 as he squeezed through.
“Our calculations were that, apart from the RBs, the rest of the midfield was split by a tenth,” he said. “That’s basically the same thing for Q1 and Q2 because it’s all the same cars. So to get out of Q1 is just as difficult as getting into Q3.”
In Q3, Albon was never really a factor as he burned through all his new softs in Q1 and Q2.
“We had no new sets of tyres for the Q3 run, so once we got into Q3 it was like, ‘well, it’s almost a guaranteed P10 now’,” he said.
Still, the result came with a sense of pride. “That’s why I was so happy to get into Q3 in the first place,” he added. “I felt like I was the one car out of the group that got it. I’m enjoying it. I’m loving the challenge,” said Alex Albon after qualifying in Shanghai for the 2025 F1 Chinese GP.
Racing Bulls surprises and what’s next
Albon also acknowledged Racing Bulls impressive performance in China, as Tsunoda’s and Hadjar ran close to the top cars. The Japanese driver was P6 in the Sprint as he held off Kimi Antonelli. In qualifying, they were comfortably best of the rest in P7 and P9.
“If I’m honest, I’m a bit surprised by RB’s pace,” Albon admitted. “We qualified where we thought we would. We were hoping to fight the RBs, but they were up at top team pace this weekend.”
Meanwhile, Carlos Sainz struggled in Q2, ending up P15 on the grid for Sunday’s race.
Looking ahead, Albon knows it won’t be easy in the F1 Chinese GP. The team has made progress, but in a Sprint format weekend, time is limited to experiment.
“It’s not quite understood. I think we just need to have a look and see where we can improve it [the graining]. I think honestly between Sprint race and in this format of the weekend, we can’t experiment as much.
“We’ve chucked everything at this main quali, but I still think we need more.
“It’s been a tricky weekend so far.”
