For the first time in the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, Alexander Albon made it into Q3 in Qualifying, with the Thai driver feeling he finished ninth in the session on merit at Spa-Francorchamps.
The Williams Racing driver will start the Belgian Grand Prix from sixth on the grid thanks to penalties for other drivers, and he admitted after the session that the team had been quietly confident of a strong result in Qualifying on Saturday.
And Albon hopes the way they have set the FW44 up – it is mightily quick in a straight line – will help them stay inside the top ten on Sunday afternoon, and maybe even make places up early on.
“It felt really good out there,” said Albon. “We’ve been quietly confident all weekend; we were looking for Q2, so Q3 is a bit unexpected but we’re very happy – this is a great result for us.
“The car was feeling strong, we’re still learning our package and we made some changes from FP3 which helped the car for qualifying. We know our car likes low downforce and, when track conditions are in a place that suits us, we can extract a good lap time out of the car.
“We were P9 on pure pace. Everyone seemed to have clear runs today and we were only a couple of tenths behind Mercedes, so it shows that in certain situations we can really maximise what we have.
“With the penalties we are starting sixth and so we have to try to hold on and maybe even overtake at the start.
“We’ve got a car that, on paper, should be hard to overtake as we are quick on the straights, but it’s also not a track like Monaco where it’s easy to keep people behind, so it’ll be elbows out tomorrow.”
“Unfortunately, the last lap was the worst lap of the weekend for me” – Nicholas Latifi
Team-mate Nicholas Latifi had hoped to follow Albon into Q2 on Saturday, but his worst lap of the weekend came at the wrong time, and he found himself eliminated in seventeenth.
The Canadian believed he had the potential to make it into the second segment of Qualifying but for his scruffy lap, although he will profit from the penalties to other drivers to start eleventh on the grid on Sunday.
Latifi feels that gaining those six places on the grid could create opportunities for him as he looks to score his first points of the season. He is currently the only full-time driver on the grid this year not yet to have broken into the top ten on a Sunday afternoon.
“I felt like we were making progress through FP3 and things were feeling much better,” said Latifi. “Despite the result, I feel the car had the potential to reach Q2, so it’s disappointing from my side and for the team.
“Unfortunately, the last lap was the worst lap of the weekend for me. I got caught out by the unpredictability of the car and tyres.
“There were a lot of big mistakes on the lap, so it ended up being scrappy. It’s frustrating to not put it on the board in the session that mattered.
“We’ll be starting a bit higher up the grid with a number of cars taking penalties so it could create some opportunities.”
