“Unfortunate” to be on the outside — Alex Albon on F1 Singapore GP start, rolls back on Colapinto divebomb radio message

Photo Credit: Williams Racing
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Alex Albon and Williams were looking promising through practice to score more points after their high in Baku where they scored ten to move ahead of Alpine in the Constructors’ Championship. However, they faced disappointment on Sunday in Singapore.

After a decent qualifying, the Thai was P11 on the grid, just in front of his teammate Franco Colapinto in P12.

As the lights went out, Colapinto made a brilliant move down the inside in turn one, getting in front of Albon, Sainz and Tsunoda in one go to move into P9.

The Thai fell four spots, dropping to 15th. He was asked about his radio message afterwards where he shouted on the radio that Colapinto divebombed.

“I don’t know how it looked on the outside but I think it was more just no one could turn into the corner so kind of everyone concertined and basically had to go straight to turn one and obviously I was on the outside so I paid the price let’s say.

“Nothing really to criticise, I think in the end it was just unfortunate that I was the one on the other side of the corner.

“A bit frustrating, I think the whole weekend has been a bit frustrating. We’ve had a car that should have been top ten and we haven’t got that.”

The 28-year-old explained how he could not turn in as planned as he had Sainz and Tsunoda on his inside following his teammate’s audacious but brilliant move.

“Yeah, the problem is basically I couldn’t turn left because Carlos couldn’t turn left because Yuki couldn’t turn left so it’s just one of those, it’s nothing serious.”

Albon then talked about the cooling issues that caused the retirement in a race where he was looking to score points, and he pointed out that they have yet to find the reasoning behind the issue.

They first suspected it could be because of some collected debris but after analysis it turned out not to be the case.

“Honestly we need to check, we thought it may have been some debris. But upon further review there’s no debris there.

“I’m not sure if it came out or if there’s something a bit more serious inside so we’re just taking it all apart now.

Williams brought a front suspension upgrade to Singapore. Albon only had the update at this event.

The Grove-based squad believes the update is working as planned, although they will need to review it over this long break until Austin according to Albon.

“Again, we think it’s working. We need to look into it more.

“We were a bit more focused on just the weekend itself, trying to get the car into a better window.

“So, about three weeks now to properly go through it, review it.”