Alex Albon has claimed team-mate Franco Colapinto “elevates everyone” in Williams amid the Argentine’s impressive performances since his Formula 1 debut.
Many within F1 will no doubt have been impressed by Colapinto’s performances with the team since replacing Logan Sargeant following the Dutch Grand Prix.
In the United States last weekend, Colapinto delivered another points finish with a fine run to sixth place, six positions ahead of his more experienced team-mate.
It is the first time that Albon has faced competition from a team-mate at Williams on a more consistent basis, but the Anglo-Thai driver has been quick to praise Colapinto for bringing an added sense of positivity to the team.
“It’s nice,” Albon told media including Motorsport Week. “We’ve had the simulator working over the weekend – just trying to, over the last few days, have a look at the differences.
“But it elevates me, it elevates everyone in the team. When I have a bad weekend, we’re still scoring points, so that’s very positive.”
Albon did not seem to agree with any notion that he has had it easy in terms of performance comparison with his team-mates.
“No [it’s not a new experience], I think if you go back a few more years, you can [see I’ve had pressure],” he added.
“At Williams, sure, but it’s how it’s always been. It’s how you race. It’s how you race since you’re nine years old. So, it’s alright.”
Albon ‘leaning’ towards Colapinto’s set-up for Mexico GP
Looking ahead to this weekend’s race at the Hermanos Rodriguez Circuit, Albon stated he is inclined to adopt a set-up more akin to Colapinto’s, believing that his engineers have mastered the upgrades that Williams debuted back in August.
“We definitely have a different car balance with the new upgrades that we brought onto the car. We’re still yet to really fully understand them.
“We can see it in the data, we can see where we’re just trying to get to grips with what’s going on.
“This will be the first weekend where I’m just kind of leaning a little bit more towards what the other side of the garage has been doing and just trying to see if that will help fix some of the issues that I’ve been having.
“I think actually around Mexico it’s going to be really important for us to try to get right because, on paper, the areas I’ve been struggling with are very corner-specific, and they’re corners that Mexico has a lot of, these kind of low-speed corners.”
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