Alexander Albon believes his performance at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix last weekend marked one of the strongest weekends in his F1 career.
Albon ended the new Sprint Shootout qualifying session in seventh place, which he converted into ninth place in the sprint race.
However, with points only handed out to the top eight finishers in the shorter outing, Albon missed out on scoring, as was the case in the grand prix, in which he classified 12th.
The Williams driver made contact with Oscar Piastri on the opening lap, making his task in the race much more difficult.
“I had some damage on my front wing for most of the race following contact with the McLaren, so there was a lot of management to do,” he said.
“It was tricky trying to keep the Haas behind me whilst staying close to Oscar, and not a lot of room for overtaking with the shortened DRS zones.”
Having endured a difficult result in the previous event from Melbourne, Albon says he was pleased to bounce back with one of his best weekends.
“We really did maximise this weekend and I think it was personally one of my strongest, especially coming off Australia,” he said.
“I think we definitely have more to find with the car, but I think I’m becoming at one with it, so hopefully we can keep this going.”
Team-mate Logan Sargeant had a more difficult weekend, as he was forced to sit out of the sprint race after crashing in the shootout.
However, the American driver says he learned a lot from the event.
“I learned a lot this weekend,” he said. “In the race today, we got a bit unlucky with the Safety Car timing at the start and fell into a bit of a lonely, frustrating race.
“I was stuck behind Zhou [Guanyu] for most of it. By the time he [retired] it was just too late and I was too far disconnected from the pack ahead.
“However, when I did get in front, the car felt good, I was driving well, and the pace was not too bad at the end. I brought a set of Hard tyres a long way and that’s all positive.
“Our one lap pace this weekend was good, and I was happy considering we only had one free practice session to go into qualifying and have a pretty good one.
“It was going to be an even better Sprint Shootout until the crash, so I’ll learn from that and move forward.”
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