Williams driver Alex Albon leaves Baku without any points but with a great sense of awareness and satisfaction, declaring the Azerbaijan Grand Prix “one of his strongest” weekends in the sport.
The Thai driver finished the Sprint in ninth place, sign of a good performance and pace of the car, ready to push to the maximum on Sunday.
Unfortunately, despite the excellent assumptions, on Lap 1 of the race into run 2, Albon’s Williams and Piastri’s McLaren came together. Contact from which the Williams did not come out unscathed, losing the front wing endplate on the right hand side.
Starting P12, he would ultimately finish in that position during a rather dull Grand Prix. In spite of everything, Albon crossed the line less than 5s behind Yuki Tsunoda in P10.
The damage had a sizable impact, inevitably compromising the race, as Williams Team Principal James Vowles explained in great detail:
“First and foremost, you lose aero balance and what it means is the balance that we had planned to go into the race with, how the car was going to be aerodynamically balanced — so the faster the corners the more it impacts you — had changed somewhat. It is quite a significant effect. You will get a lot more understeer therefore, at high speed.
“It also impacts which tyres wear more as a result of it, because clearly now you’re struggling with a lot more understeer than you had planned in your initial balance. And the front will take a hit as a result. Further to that though, there is just general losses in downforce for the car because there is still a flow structure that’s now not in place, that impacts on the front of floor, mid floor and rear floor.
“In terms of numbers – added Vowles — the ballpark is three tenths. That’s about the amount of performance that we cost ourselves with that damage to the front ring endplate. And in a race that’s this tight that really may have made the difference between being at least a position or two further up or where we ended.”
Photo credit: Williams Racing
During post-race interviews, Albon himself commented the difficulties he had to face in order to manage the car and maximise everything he could.
“It was tricky trying to keep the Haas behind me whilst staying close to Oscar, and not a lot of room for overtaking with the shortened DRS zones.
“We really did maximise this weekend and I think it was personally one of my strongest, especially coming off Australia. I think we definitely have more to find with the car, but I think I’m becoming at one with it, so hopefully we can keep this going.”
