Albon Close to Top 10 Sargeant Struggles at GP

Albon nearly made the top 10 while Sargeant faced hardships, yet Williams F1 scores no points again. No points for Williams F1 after the Chinese Grand Prix either.

Despite some incidents and retirements ahead of Alex Albon, the Thai driver finished 12th, just behind Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Ocon. In the right group, but still outside the top 10.

“It was a bit boring for me, I don’t know how it was for you,” said Albon.

“I was very busy during the race, sandwiched between the two Alpines. I didn’t think we needed to switch to mediums but we tried to cover it, and it was very tough. These tires struggled this weekend, and that’s putting it diplomatically. The tires lasted literally 4 corners after the stop; you’d go through turns 1, 2, and 3 and it was over. The degradation was so high it was tearing up the tires. It was painful but it was the same for everyone.”

“Honestly, I don’t think the upgrades are revolutionary, but they provide balance. We’re not good in fast corners, here we only have data from 2019 but our results back then were dismal! But it’s tough on entry and tough on exit, when the turn is long, it’s hard to balance the car.”

For Logan Sargeant, who finished 17th and was penalized 10 seconds for not giving back his place to Hülkenberg under safety car, “it was a difficult weekend because we struggled to get the car in the right window.”

“We had good and bad moments throughout the weekend. Most importantly, we need to determine what we could have done better as a team.”

“The first half of the race was solid. Starting on softs was strong, then we were in a very good position with the medium tires. We probably could have done without the Safety Car as we would have gone medium-medium strategy which would have suited us better.”

“When we switched to hard tires, I couldn’t get them to temperature and suffered from degradation.”

“The penalty for the safety car infraction didn’t really matter in the end. From my perspective, I thought I crossed the line first. When cars are traveling at such different speeds, I don’t know how I could have known the true order.”