Albon calls for Williams review of “frustrating” F1 British GP qualifying

Williams Formula 1 driver Alex Albon has called for a review of the team’s decisions in British Grand Prix qualifying after both of the squad’s cars were eliminated in Q2.

The Grove outfit was already facing reliability issues ahead of the race weekend after suffering from a double DNF in Austria last week.

But hopes of bouncing back with a strong event on home turf were dented by Albon only managing to qualify 14th, while team-mate Carlos Sainz was 11th – although the pair have been boosted by a grid penalty for Oliver Bearman. 

“Yes, I think internally we need to review what went on there, because we put on a set of tyres when Franco [Colapinto] crashed, and then we went out on the track when it was quite clear it was going to be a red flag, so, basically we immediately wasted a set in qualifying,” the Thai driver said when asked about the Q2 elimination.

“We went into Q2 run one on a used set of tyres. Until this point, we were looking good, feeling good, and I actually did a pretty good lap in Q2 run one, considering the used tyres.

“Then we go into Q2 run two and try to go out at the very front of the pack, where Max is – and Max’s out lap is about 15–20 seconds slower than ours – so we did Q2 run two on our final new set, basically not even close to being ready. 

“Q2 was obviously compromised, let’s say that. We need to review what we did. We generally do go on the early side in quali – we like to – but today was too much. We need to understand why we like to go so early all the time.”

He added: “I mean, we’ve been quick all weekend. We’re quick in Q1, we’re quick in Q2 run one – and then it’s like, yeah, P14. So very frustrating.”

Sainz also remarked about how other teams have taken a step forward and this has left the close midfield battle even more congested.

“I think we’ve been the whole weekend just on that time gap between P9 to P14 in the middle of the midfield, and you obviously don’t know when it comes to Q2 and putting everyone together, how we would perform,” he said.

“In the end, honestly, my lap felt really clean. It is true that we’ve been dedicating a lot of the weekend to a bit of set-up experimentation and trying to get rid of our reliability issues, so maybe it hasn’t been the best ever build-up to quali.

“But the lap felt strong there at the end. I think we are in that phase of the season where, even on a track where we were expecting to be competitive, the others have improved just a bit too much for us, and we just are always like this to get into Q3, and we start to need a bit of a lift in performance.”