2023-11-28 22:45:31
Alex Albon has admitted that the outcome of Williams Racing’s battle for seventh place in the 2023 constructors’ championship was outside the team’s fortunes and rested in the hands of Yuki Tsunoda. Both teams entered the season finale in seventh place in the standings, but AlphaTauri had a chance to overtake their rivals by just seven points. A total prize money of 9 million dollars (approximately 1.345 billion yen) was at stake.
While Hiroki Tsunoda qualified in 6th place, neither Albon nor Logan Sargent finished in the top 10 and ultimately ended the weekend outside of the points. Therefore, if Hiroki Tsunoda had finished the race in the starting position, he would have been able to pull off a successful turnaround. Although he fought hard to become the second Japanese driver in F1 history to lead the Grand Prix, Yuki Tsunoda finished in 8th place thanks to a one-stop strategy, and Williams maintained its championship position. Albon, who finished 14th, said at Yas Marina that there was nothing more Williams might do and no chance of scoring points. Albon told the media following the race, “It was a tough race where I had to rely on Yuki.” “Unfortunately, Yuki was too fast. We mightn’t be involved in his race. He was far ahead of us. “But luckily for us, we didn’t have a lot of fast cars. I was able to overtake him and secure seventh place,” he said, referring to Fernando Alonso, Sergio Perez, Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz, who started behind Hiroki Tsunoda. . Albon had a poor start to the race, dropping three places on the opening lap. “I had wheelspin right away and then more wheelspin started and I really struggled at first,” Albon said. Albon then improved, moving up to 11th before his first pit stop, but that was the closest he came to points, before dropping back to 19th. At his second pit stop he was running 13th. It looked like he would finish 15th in the final stint, but Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz suffered a power unit problem and Albon finished the race in 14th place. “My race was decent. I think it wasn’t my best because I had a bad start, but I think I recovered in the second and third stint,” Albon agreed. The strength of the wind at the beginning of the race was also an issue for the FW45. “It was quite windy for the first 20 laps of the race. It’s amazing how much stress it puts on our car,” he said. “It became very difficult to drive and it fell apart more.” I lamented. “Then the wind died down and we changed the tires and the car came back to life. It was very strong, especially in the last stint. “That’s the delicacy of our car in a way, if we hadn’t had that first stint. “We might have been in the points race.” “Looking ahead to next year, we have a challenge ahead of us, but we’re already excited regarding what’s to come. “If you look at the progress we’ve made so far, it’s a great achievement. “It’s a credit to myself that we had one of the best years in F1. It was because of the connection we had with the team that we were able to maintain our position race following race.” “We were able to finish seventh in the constructors’ championship thanks to our hard work throughout the year. Congratulations to everyone on the team, including everyone at the track and at the factory.”
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