Alex Albon came within a close distance of a much-needed points finish at the French Grand Prix, after crossing the line thirteenth at the Circuit Paul Ricard. The Thai/British driver was once again top Williams Racing driver in the Grand Prix.
Albon drove well during the race, and was able to compete with others much easier than of late. However, running at a pace close to the top ten came at a cost, as Albon struggled from tyre degradation during the race.
Albon is expecting the team to look over the data ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, where he’ll be hoping to capitalise slightly better on Qualifying in the top fifteen.
“It was tricky out there today but more enjoyable. We were in contention for most of the race and were looking close to the points – we were a bit down on pace and were using a lot of the tyres to try to stay close, and it just fell away from us towards the end. We’ll look at the data and hopefully we can improve week on week as we were quite quick in qualifying. We’ll look at it and see what we can do better for Hungary.”
“The season is getting back on track” – Nicholas Latifi
On the other side of the Williams garage, Nicholas Latifi was forced to retire from the Grand Prix. The Canadian driver had no choice but to retire from the race, after collecting a puncture which caused substantial damage to his FW44.
It meant the weekend ended in disappointing fashion for Latifi, who had the new upgrades fitted to his car ahead of the Grand Prix.
Despite retiring, Latifi took a number of positives from the weekend, including, “racing cars” he isn’t usually competing with.
“There are a lot of positives to take from today. The pace was competitive, especially in dirty air, and I was racing cars that I haven’t been racing against all year so that’s been nice. I definitely don’t think I was at fault for the incident with Kevin, it was maybe more of a racing incident. The incident was a shame as our pace was strong and we were racing out of position against cars that we were quite a bit quicker than.
“Being further up in qualifying would have made a difference, but it’s nice to get racing again. I take the confidence in that pace from the upgrade and I feel that the season is getting back on track and we can make a proper start now.”
