Alex Albon believes he maximised every opportunity to score points for Williams with one exception during the 2023 Formula 1 season.
After being rooted to the foot of the championship in four of the past five seasons, Williams managed its best placing in six years in 2023 with seventh position.
The Grove-based squad heavily relied on the exploits of Albon, who achieved 27 of the side’s 28 points as it narrowly resisted a late onslaught of pressure from rivals AlphaTauri.
The Anglo-Thai driver peaked with seventh-place finishes in both Montreal and Monza, where he relied on the straight-line speed of the FW45 to defend from faster cars behind.
Although Albon is satisfied with the progress Williams made in the past campaign, he is angling to amass points in a more conventional manner in the upcoming year.
“I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved at the team,” he said. “I think about the races that we’ve scored points in and we haven’t had really a smooth race where we’ve just gone, ‘Well, that was nice’. I wish we had more of them, but unfortunately, a lot of them are holding up a bunch of cars behind us, which is what we’ve become renowned for.
“The car has improved a lot from last year. We’re going into every weekend feeling like there’s a chance to score points, but even in that case, you know, our race pace there’s not always that great and yet we still come away with good points.
“And yeah, I have to say that in reflection I’ve had a lot of fun moments from this year.”
Williams’ dependency on Albon throughout 2023 derived from electing to promote rookie driver Logan Sargeant, who endured a challenging debut season in the top flight.
Following a promising start, the American newcomer was involved in a spate of incidents and only picked up a solitary point in Austin courtesy of exclusions elsewhere.
However, Albon did rue a costly mistake of his own at the Australian Grand Prix in the third round of the campaign when he looked certain to notch a respectable points haul.
Having qualified an impressive eighth, the ex-Red Bull affiliate was running solidly inside the points during the opening stages when he lost his car at Turn 6 and crashed out.
“I think Melbourne was the only race where I felt like I missed an opportunity to score points,” he reflected.
“But every other race we’ve done this year when there’s been a chance we’ve done it and I think that’s been the main difference against our rivals.”
Albon recovered from that setback to add six more points finishes to his 10th place in Bahrain as he wound up 13th in the standings, eight spots above his team-mate.
Discussion about this post