Following a frustrating qualifying session on Saturday, the Williams Racing team were overall happy with their performance at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit during the Mexico City Grand Prix. Alex Albon just fell short of scoring points and made it home in twelfth position, after starting the race in the seventeenth position, his fastest lap being 1:22.914s, more than two seconds behind George Russell‘s fastest lap, which came in at 1:20.153s.
After a difficult start, Albon was happy with the pace which he felt to be “relatively strong” as the race progressed. The extreme weather conditions in Mexico City meant that the drivers had to be cautious when pushing the car to the limit, in order to avoid possible overheating. Albon believed that the team did well with the strategy to find gaps of clean, dry air.
“Honestly, I’m really happy with today and it feels like our pace was relatively strong from where it was on Friday. We had a tricky start so we dropped to 19th and despite a few retirements, we overtook everyone else, so I think it was a good race from us.
“It was a thermal race with the dirty air making the brakes hot and then the tyres hot, so we did well with our strategy to find the gaps of clean air.”
Williams seem to be getting better at figuring out the strength and weaknesses of the FW44, as the results from the Mexico City GP seem to be better than the team had originally thought. Albon commented that he’s leaving Mexico with “a lot of positives” and is glad that the team are able to adapt the car to suit circuits that make racing difficult for the two Williams drivers.
“It was really close today and I’m feeling good with a lot of positives to take away. I think we’re getting better at solving the weaknesses in the car and at a circuit that doesn’t suit us we were able to set up the car and compete with those around us.”
Nicholas Latifi: “Unfortunately, we had no pace today”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the garage, Albon’s team-mate Nicholas Latifi seemed to be having a less than perfect race, and fell way down the grid and came home in eighteenth position, the same place he qualified for.
After pitting for the Hard tyre, Latifi seemed to lose all pace and unfortunately failed to improve his race as the laps went on. Suffering from damage early on in the race, it was clear that the race was going to be a struggle. Even on a set of fresh Soft tyres, Latifi’s pace was dropping off by several seconds. The damage to the car is still unknown to the team and whether the damage contributed to the poor performance is still yet to be determined, but Latifi reflected on the race and admitted it was “a very lonely day” out on the track.
Moving forward, the Canadian has hopes that the team will now focus on making a comeback in Brazil, for the penultimate race on the calendar.
“We had some car damage from early on in the race which was confirmed by the team. In the beginning, it didn’t seem too bad but as the race went on our pace seemed to deteriorate.
“We need to see what the damage specifically was but unfortunately, we had no pace today. Even at the end, I was two or three seconds a lap slower on new Soft tyres compared to people on older Softs. Overall a very lonely day but we’ll look to bounce back in Brazil.”
