Half-a-tenth was all that separated Alex Albon from his sixth Qualifying Two appearance of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, and the Thai driver has rued the missed chance, stating that he felt his FW44 was capable of reaching Q2 at the Suzuka International Racing Course.
Albon’s Qualifying One exit marks the eleventh time this season that the Williams Racing driver has fallen at the first huddle in qualifying. The Williams driver chalked his early exit up to a struggle in being able to generate enough heat into his soft compound tyres on his out-lap. Albon mentioned that a pile-up of traffic in the third sector was the contributing factor in not being able to heat up his tyres in time for his flying lap at the end of Q1.
Albon’s only official flying lap of Q1 would prove to not be enough as the Williams driver would narrowly miss out by just half a tenth to Sebastian Vettel. Lining up in sixteenth-place for Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix, Albon is hoping that he will be able to pull on the solid race pace the FW44 showed in practice to bring home a positive result for the Williams team.
“It’s frustrating to miss out on Q2 by just half a tenth, as I definitely feel like we had the car today to be in Q2. The very end of our outlap was slow because the cars in front of me were very slow through sector 3, so the tyres weren’t quite ready. I was sliding around very quickly early in the lap and that causes the tyres to overheat. More than any other circuit that is very detrimental to lap time. Our race pace was okay in the dry, so we’ll need to wait and see what happens tomorrow.”
Nicholas Latifi: “To be a few tenths from Q2 is a positive as it wasn’t a perfect lap with a few mistakes in the middle of it”
While Nicholas Latifi was undoubtedly disappointed with his Q1 exit, the Canadian driver has taken his performance in Qualifying as a positive after the Williams driver struggled to adapt to the dry conditions of the Suzuka International Racing Course in Free Practice Three.
During FP3 Latifi said over the radio that his FW44 was particularly sensitive to the wind around Suzuka and according to the Canadian driver he was only able to set two representative laps to take with him into qualifying.
Despite a more confident showing from the Williams driver in qualifying, just like his teammate, Latifi would fail to make it out of Q1, marking the seventeenth time this season that Latifi has been eliminated from the opening session to qualifying this season.
Latifi would be just two and a half tenths behind the time set by Sebastian Vettel, leaving the Canadian with a back-row start in twentieth place for Sunday’s race. Despite starting from the back, the straight line speed of the FW44 has given the Williams driver a reason to be optimistic ahead of Sunday’s Grand Prix.
“From how FP3 went, Qualifying went better than expected. It’s been my first time driving this track in the dry. However, I only managed to do two representative laps in FP3. The track itself is quite difficult to get up to speed with as It requires a lot of commitment and full trust and confidence in the car. To only have a few laps to really put it on the edge was unfortunate.
“I’m happy with the steps I made and as a team we went in the right direction with the car. To be a few tenths from Q2 is a positive as it wasn’t a perfect lap with a few mistakes in the middle of it. We’re very fast in the straight here so if we manage to get ahead of cars tomorrow it could be interesting.”
