Albon's Steadfast Strategy Amid Williams' Chassis Crunch

Despite a spare chassis shortage at Williams, Alex Albon vows to maintain his usual racing approach, facing challenges head-on.

Alex Albon has emphasized that his on-track approach will continue as usual, even though Williams still lacks a spare chassis.

Albon’s teammate, Logan Sargeant, was forced to miss the Australian Grand Prix after Williams controversially allocated the only available chassis to the Thai driver.

The former Red Bull racer had crashed during the opening practice session at Albert Park, ruling him out of Free Practice 2. Although Williams managed to repair Albon’s damaged chassis, which Sargeant will race in Suzuka, neither driver is expected to have a backup chassis until Miami.

Speaking at the FIA press conference in Japan, Albon stated that this would not alter his racing approach.

“Not at all. We’ve been in this situation since Bahrain, and it really doesn’t change anything. It will be the same this weekend and in China, we won’t have a spare car. As I said, the mindset is the same as at the first race. We will push because that’s the only way you can aim for points. We don’t have the luxury of driving at 99.9% hoping for a top 10.”

What to expect in Suzuka? In terms of performance, Williams struggled a bit with tire wear in Melbourne. Does he think returning to the harder compounds this weekend will benefit the FW46?

“I think it was more tire degradation than expected, and it caught us off guard. And obviously, with limited track time, we didn’t optimize the settings. We would probably have done things a bit differently for Sunday with more running.”

“What we’ve seen so far, in fact, is that the car performs quite well over the races, better than last year. Melbourne was maybe a bit more like last year, but we’ve made a step forward in race pace in general. So, I hope it will be the same here this weekend.”

Albon’s Steadfast Strategy Amid Williams’ Chassis Crunch. Albon’s Steadfast Strategy Amid Williams’ Chassis Crunch