Albon questions sudden Q3 drop in Monaco as Sainz exits early despite strong pace and struggles with Ferrari’s balance all weekend.
Tenth in qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix despite running close to the top five until then, Alex Albon has reason to be disappointed. The Williams F1 driver was significantly slower in Q3, and had he managed to replicate his Q2 lap, he would have qualified sixth, just 0.063s behind Max Verstappen.
“It’s frustrating, my Q2 lap was half a second quicker than my Q3 lap, and that’s never good news!” said Albon. “We need to understand why. We had a very good rhythm between FP1 and FP3.”
“In Q1, we were wondering what was going on with the tyres because they weren’t working properly. Q2 allowed me to get back on pace, we found a solution to make them work, and Q3 went back to how Q1 was, and I lost grip.”
“I slid in the first corner on every lap except for my best lap in Q2. And these tyres are so sensitive that once you start getting surface temperature, it gets out of control. It wasn’t my best performance but we need to understand why we weren’t in the right window.”
The Thai driver is not sure he will be more comfortable in the race: “It should be fine, but my long runs weren’t good. We had graining, so it will be interesting. And even with two stops, it could be a race about management.”
Sainz Lacks Pace, Confidence
Carlos Sainz was knocked out in Q2: “Fast but not comfortable, I was off the pace all weekend trying to chase the right balance. All the progress made on normal circuits didn’t bring the speed and comfort I had in Imola here.”
“We need to analyse on our side because we had the pace to go through to Q3, even if we weren’t comfortable. But in Q2 we mixed mediums and softs and I lost confidence, so I couldn’t put together a good lap.”
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