Alex Albon was more than aware of the importance of finishing ninth during Sunday’s Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix, picking up Williams’ first points of the campaign.
Heading into the event, Williams was one of two teams yet to score, along with Sauber.
The Grove-based outfit’s struggles thus far have been well documented with a troubled off-season, spare-chassis drama and overweight car compounding Williams’ issues.
But alas, Monaco proved to be a turning point on Albon’s side of the garage as he qualified ninth on Saturday and converted that to two crucial points on Sunday.
“To be honest with you I’ll take that,” Albon said.
“P9 is good for the team, gets us off to a start and means a lot to us. Never like to be pointless.
“It’s great for the morale of the team. Now we’re on the board we can use that to be springboard the rest of the season.
“We’ve added small amounts of performance to the car so it’s good to see these upgrades working and that we’re able to stay around a similar pace to our direct competitors.”
The Thai-Anglo driver spent the bulk of the race parked up behind Yuki Tsunoda’s rear wing, as the majority of the field settled into severe pace management after the red flag restart, leading him to state he’d rather his first points of the season came in a “more interesting race.”
Albon exclaimed he found it hard to concentrate amid the slow speeds the entire F1 field was running at, whilst getting a more than decent look at the RB’s rear wing.
“It’s annoying because [Tsunoda] had pace, he had so much pace! I was like, we can all manage, I’m happy to manage. We don’t need to manage this much,” Albon said.
“We were managing so much. I was like ‘man, I could get out and drive my Vespa around here’. I mean it was so slow. It was so painful. I
“t’s actually hard to stay focused when you’re driving that slowly because you’re just not even near anything. You’re not near any limit.
“[Tsunoda] absolutely cleared off at the end of the race and I was like, ‘you could have done this the whole time!”
It’s safe to say Albon’s name can be added to the list of those who found the Monaco GP an underwhelming affair, but points for Williams is a more than suitable tonic to help savour the bitter dreariness that was Sunday’s race.
