Baku results were “luxurious”, insists Alex Albon

Williams have been understandably delighted after their double point-scoring results, with Alexander Albon labelling their results at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as “luxurious”.

Williams displayed strong pace in the qualifying session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The Grove-based outfit split the strategies between its driver, with Alexander Albon starting on the hard tyre and Franco Colapinto on the mediums.

The Argentine driver pitted very early and then had to make his hard tyres last 41 laps. Meanwhile his team-mate Albon was running as high as third on his long first stint, getting himself into the mix with Lando Norris and Max Versteppen.

After Albon has completed his sole pit stop, he was able to climb back up into the points to finish seventh, with his team-mate ended up eighth courtesy of the late crash between Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz.

The London-born Thai driver commented: “We know how difficult it is to get P9’s and P10’s in races, so to get P7 and P8 is luxurious and we’ll take that! We’ve moved in front of Alpine now in the championship, which was our target by the end of the year.

“It shows we’ve made good progress with the upgrade. It’s another weekend when we’ve been similar to the Aston on pace and we’ve scored points for the second race in a row.

“We were much quicker than we expected to be compared to the top teams and it was nice to be in that fight. Let’s see next week but, for this weekend, it’s been strong.

Having only made his F1 debut last time out at Monza, Colapinto commented: “To score my first points in Formula 1 is a fantastic feeling. I’m so proud of this team for what we’ve already been able to achieve together.

“I’m delighted to have points on the board to show for all the hard work and effort we’ve been putting in with it only being my second race. We had good pace today being very close to the Aston.

“To finish seventh and eighth alongside Alex means we’re now P8 in the Constructors’ Championship which is a good step forward and a motivator for the team.

“We still need to keep learning and improving together as it’s a long season with many races left. I’m looking forward to racing in Singapore for the first time next weekend,” said Colapinto.

Reflecting on the team’s strategy at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, sporting director Sven Smeets has revealed that Williams had been intent on giving itself flexibiliy with the two different strategies.

“We decided to split strategy between the cars today to keep our options open as Baku is many times an incident rich race. The race started well for us, and we pitted Franco who started on the Medium tyre.

“As Alonso had pitted this freed up Alex who started on the Hard and he showed some great pace in his stint. When he started to struggle with his tyres, we pitted him a bit earlier than planned onto the Medium. After overtaking Hulkenberg and Franco, he started to chase Alonso who was a few seconds ahead of him.

“He came close to Alonso but a few laps before the end the Medium started to struggle so we decided to make sure we could go to the end with the tyre. Franco did a great job keeping Hamilton and Bearman behind and, when a struggling Hulkenberg in front of him touched the wall, it brought Franco into the points.

“We were settling for P9 and P10 until a late accident between Perez and Sainz moved us up to P7 and P8. This was a great afternoon for the whole team; we’ve been competitive the whole weekend and have been rewarded with our first double points finish since last season’s U.S. Grand Prix. Now we are looking forward to going to Singapore where we hope to bring the next upgrade to the car.