Thanks to retirements and racing incidents, Alexander Albon did not finish that far from points in Baku (12th place). However it is clear that it was the tree that hid the forest for an underperforming Williams side in the Azerbaijani city.
Although the pace of the race seemed to be better, at least on one side of the garage if we are to believe the Thai, who says he had a good time this Sunday at least!
“It was a fun race here in Baku! We were a bit unlucky with the timing of the Virtual Safety Car otherwise we would have been in a better position to fight for the points today but once more our race pace was really strong. If you look at our pace from the midfield, it was very solid; we were as fast, if not faster, than many cars ahead of us. We got off to a good start, optimized what we had, and it was a well-run race for us. »
Nicholas Latifi suffered two penalties. For the first, very heavy (ten-second stop-and-go), he had nothing to do with it since it was the result of an error by his team, who continued to work on their single-seater following the allotted time on the gate. For the second, and as in Monaco, the Canadian is responsible: he once more delayed too long before letting another car pass under blue flags.
“It’s unfortunate that the penalty canceled everything before it even started. I feel like there should be some leniency for the offense as I was just pushed back and nothing was changed to the car. It was tricky to be so far from the peloton. The race ended up being very long and lonely. We managed to do more kilometers and laps with the car, but overall a difficult weekend at this circuit. A day to forget, but I’m excited to head straight to Canada for my first home race. »
Dave Robson, performance director, retains, like Alexander Albon, the best race pace of the Williams in long stints this Sunday.
“Alex rode very well and the pace of the FW44 in race pace was good today. The VSC timing that kept Bottas in front was frustrating, but that’s racing. »
“Nicholas had a tough day, with an immediate penalty for a minor grid rule violation. The penalty is imposed by regulation and we were at fault, albeit only momentarily, so we need to review our process and make sure it doesn’t happen once more in the future. »
“We will learn from this weekend for Canada. We can’t wait to get back to Montreal and compete on another exciting circuit using the softest of Pirelli compounds. »
