Alex Albon was left to rue a missed opportunity as Carlos Sainz took him out of the Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday.
The 28-year-old had pulled off one of the overtakes of the decade so far earlier in the race as he brilliantly passed Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon heading into the final chicane, somehow finding a gap between them to move into P9.
Running in 10th, he was passed by Sainz the lap before they crashed as he ended up on a wet part of the track as the group behind Tsunoda bunched up together.
It proved very costly as the Spaniard spun on the next lap, collecting Albon and ending both their races.
Albon was understandably frustrated following a good drive and solid calls from the pit lane throughout the day, with points on the table for a second consecutive race.
“Yeah, frustrating, honestly.”
“I think when I look at the race as a whole, it seemed like we didn’t take much risk in our strategy, but we were making good calls the whole time.
“You know, if you look at the Haas, they did a good gamble on the wets at the beginning of the race.
“You look at some of the guys that stayed out on the inter [Tsunoda and Ocon], not pitting for a new one in the middle of the race. We kind of just did what we felt was right for us.
“And even if it didn’t work out sometimes, we kept getting back the positions. We kept fighting back into the points and I was enjoying it out there.
“There’s a lot to play for and I was having a lot of fun. And then two laps in a row, two drivers went off in the same corner.
“The first one, I lost the position. I had to avoid the crash. And then the lap after Carlos obviously had his spin.
“I was kind of expecting him to stop, but the way it kind of rolled around and I thought when I made my initial move to go left, ‘OK, that’s fine. I’ve got a position’.
“And then as I saw him coming and rolling around me, I was like, ‘OK, he’s going to clip my rear right’. Bit of a passenger.
“So frustrating because for sure points were available today.”
Alpine scoring three points on Sunday has moved them ahead of Williams in the Constructors’ Championship, dropping the Grove-based team to P9.
On a positive note, the Thai is hopeful that more updates will help them continue to improve and reduce the weight of the FW46.
Albon has made Q3 at the last two rounds and looked very strong following updates, with Sargeant also going well in qualifying in Canada as he was P13.
Responding to the question of whether he could draw any confidence from his race overall, Albon said, “Yes, for sure. That’s two races now where we should have been scoring points.
“Last race, we did score points. This race, I felt like we’re unlucky not to. I think it’s a little bit track specific. I would like to see where we are in Barcelona.
“That being said, we still have upgrades and updates coming. We haven’t really done that much so far this year, especially aerodynamically. I’m hopeful.”
