Alex Albon has defied claims that Williams’ exploits in qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix were down to optimising a low-downforce set-up.
After showcasing promising pace throughout practice, Albon was confident on Friday that Williams could produce a strong performance at Zandvoort this weekend.
Having advanced through the first two stages of qualifying with ease, Albon negotiated a heavily delayed Q3 session to set the fourth fastest time on a drying track.
Asked to explain how he equalled his best qualifying result in Formula 1, Albon said: “Yeah… I don’t! [laughs] We’ve been good in FP1, good in FP2, good in FP3.
“Of course, there was an element that we thought we were going to start slipping back, but not more than any other than I think the car felt good the first lap we drove in FP1, and normally when that happens, the others start to really chip away at it, get their car in their window.
“I just felt like oh maybe we’ve hit our sweet spot early. We didn’t really play too much with the car since FP1, and it made me feel confident. Then when you add confidence with a track like this, which is so narrow, so uncompromising, and at the same time, mixed conditions, wet, dry, that kind of thing, you really just need to feel at one with the car, and I have done this weekend.
“I think when you have these kind of conditions, it’s not always about peak downforce, it’s about having a car that’s drivable and on the limit. And our car has been all weekend. So yeah, that’s my explanation.”
With Williams’s strongest performances this season coming on low-downforce circuit configurations, the Grove-based side entered the weekend expecting to struggle.
While Albon admits he has been left slightly perplexed by the team’s pace, the Anglo-Thai driver contends that a “really nice headwind” into several corners aided Williams’ cause.
“I also, it’s no secret that we’re not normally good at high downforce circuits,” he explained. “We also think about Spa or Monza or something like that. For me, that’s the unanswered bit.
“The one explanation I do have, there’s been a really, really nice headwind in a lot of these corners. Turn 9, Turn 11, have always been terrible corners for us, corners where we’ve been losing two-tenths each corner.
“And with a headwind, we’re almost on lap time a little bit slower but really not much, half a tenth maybe. And so I think that’s helped us a lot, a lot more than normal.
“We actually drove this wind on the dill, on the simulator sorry, we do play around with it. We knew this wind was good for our car, but we got it, which is nice.”
After Pierre Gasly rued the difficulty in overtaking the Williams cars down the straights, Albon has countered by underlining that the British outfit hasn’t been near the top of the speed traps at all this weekend.
Therefore, the ex-Red Bull racer has ruled out being able to hold up a train of cars to score points in the same manner that he did during the Canadian Grand Prix in June.
“We’re not top of the speed traps,” Albon argued. “We haven’t been at all this weekend. We’ve actually been very, very midfield.
“I think the Alpines and Ferraris have been running quite a lot less downforce than we have.
“So we are, we can’t do a Canada. We have to be quick on pure pace, else we will get overtaken. I think in the long run it’s beneficial, because you saw it in Spa. Too much, it doesn’t work for our car, we overheat our tires.”
Despite starting on the second row of the grid, Albon is expecting multiple drivers in front-running cars to come past him at some stage during Sunday’s race.
When asked if he could start dreaming of a podium finish, he replied: “Uh… I think our race pace was respectable in FP2, but it definitely wasn’t top tier. All the top tier teams are around us. There’s no driver that can hold them up, they’re all directly behind me, so it’s going to be a tough race.”
