Albon shocked by lack of upgrades so far in 2024

Following another tough race weekend at the Belgian Grand Prix, Williams driver Alexander Albon insists that the Grove-headquartered team is paying the price for not bringing any upgrades to its FW46.

Having managed to hold off reigning champion, Max Verstappen for half a lap, Alex Albon started concentrating on the fierce battle in the midpack of the field.

He was locked in a fight with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon and Visa Cash RB racer Daniel Ricciardo, battling it out for the last championship point. However, both Ocon and Ricciardo managed to overtake him, and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll also got ahead of the Thai-British driver with his one-stop strategy.

Albon noted: “I had a good start today but ultimately; we just didn’t have the pace. I think we executed the race as well as we could but at the end of the day, you need pace to get points and we just didn’t have it.

“It would’ve been better if we had two sets of Hard tyres for the race but unfortunately, we didn’t, so I’m not sure if that would’ve changed things.

“We haven’t had any upgrades all year, so I think we’re just falling behind the pack too much, which makes things difficult. We’ve got some coming after the summer break, so hopefully, we can return more competitive.”

His team-mate Logan Sargeant had some wheel to wheel action at the back of the field, albeit he ended the Spa F1 round with a lowly P18 result, beating Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg by just under three seconds.

The Miami-born driver commented: “It wasn’t great today. I feel like the Hard tyres were solid and I was happy with the pace, but the first two Medium stints were pretty tricky and it wasn’t easy to drive.

“In my second Medium stint, I was trying to hold people up behind, which was ultimately helping Alex ahead, so I was trying to do my best in that sense. I think things could have looked a little different if we had a dry Qualifying, but now we will use the summer to reset.

Commenting on Williams’ weekend at Spa, Sporting Director, Sven Smeets: “It was a difficult and disappointing afternoon. We started the race well with Alex gaining two places in the start and a good first stint on the Medium following Fernando. We decided to cover off some of the early stoppers and fitted the Medium again.

“Unfortunately, we struggled a bit in that second stint, and it became clear that some of our competitors had more pace than us. P13 was all that was in it today, however with the disqualification of George, this moves Alex to P12 and Logan to P17.

“We’ll use the summer shutdown to charge the batteries and come back stronger for Holland with some upgrades planned for the coming races following the break.”