Alex Albon branded being caught up in Carlos Sainz’s spin as “frustrating” as the innocuous contact curtailed his points hopes in the Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix.
The Williams driver capitalised on Ferrari’s disastrous showing to advance through to Q3 for the second consecutive weekend and secure a 10th-place starting spot.
Albon was driving a mature race in interchangeable conditions and made an opportunistic move into the last chicane on a restart to take two positions in one corner.
However, the Anglo-Thai racer was caught up when Sergio Perez went wide at Turn 6 and compromised Albon’s line to allow Sainz to get past on the drier racing line.
That proved to be instrumental in Albon’s race as Sainz’s pursuit to climb his Ferrari into the points saw him spin at the same corner and collect the hapless Williams.
Reflecting on the collision with Sainz that meant Williams endured a double retirement as Logan Sargeant crashed earlier, Albon said: “Yeah, frustrating, honestly.
“I think when I look at the race as a whole, it seemed like we didn’t take much risk in our strategy, but we were making good calls the whole time.
“You know, if you look at the Haas, they did a good gamble on the wets at the beginning of the race.
“You look at some of the guys that stayed out on the inter, not pitting for a new one in the middle of the race. We kind of just did what we felt was right for us.
“And even if it didn’t work out sometimes, we kept getting back the positions. We kept fighting back into the points and I was enjoying it out there.
“There’s a lot to play for and I was having a lot of fun. And then two laps in a row, two drivers went off in the same corner.
“The first one, I lost the position. I had to avoid the crash. And then the lap after Carlos obviously had his spin.
“I was kind of expecting him to stop, but the way it kind of rolled around and I thought when I made my initial move to go left, ‘OK, that’s fine. I’ve got a position’.
“And then as I saw him coming and rolling around me, I was like, ‘OK, he’s going to clip my rear right’. Bit of a passenger.
“So frustrating because for sure points was available today.”
But despite acknowledging that the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve suited its FW45, Albon drew encouragement from Williams emerging as a competitive midfield contender.
The ex-Red Bull has revealed that the Grove-based squad will be introducing updates in the coming rounds as it bids to rebound from a challenging start to the season.
Asked whether he could take confidence from his race overall, Albon repled: “Yes, for sure. That’s two races now where we should have been scoring points.
“Last race, we did score points. This race, I felt like we’re unlucky not to. I think it’s a little bit track specific. I would like to see where we are in Barcelona.
“That being said, we still have upgrades and updates coming. We haven’t really done that much so far this year, especially aerodynamically. I’m hopeful.”
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