Alexander Albon was indeed frustrated to lose out on potential points in F1 Canadian GP, as Logan Sargeant admits to not doing a good enough job.
Williams’ Albon was right in the mix of points in F1 Canadian GP when Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz spun in front of him in a tight sequence and amid several cars bunched up. The Thai took the avoiding action, but the Spaniard came back on the track to hit him.
Albon was spun around then and beached on the grass to cause a safety car, thereby ending his day when a point scored would have been crucial in a tight battle. In fact, Williams lost eighth to Alpine in the standings after the latter’s three points.
Coming into the Canadian GP, they were tied on two points but Williams were ahead of Alpine, but a double DNF on their side and double points on the other side helped the French F1 outfit to leapfrog them in further dismay.
It was frustrating indeed for Albon, who had a fine double overtake early on. Sainz did apologise to him and Williams. “Yeah, frustrating, honestly,’ he said to media. “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. 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 were available. 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,” summed up Albon, whose teammate Sargeant had another crash to retire early on.
He admitted to the mistake in tricky conditions. “Honestly, I am not sure, I have to look back at the mistake,” said Sargeant to media. “But I just lost the rear extremely quickly, couldn’t save it. That’s about all I know. It was extremely difficult especially at the start of the race, the amount of standing water.
“We had quite a lot of aquaplaning going on to try to manage that, quite easy to make small mistakes, one that was extremely costly. It was tricky with low grip, difficult to manage but I didn’t do a good enough job of it.”
Here’s Logan Sargeant crashing out: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-canadian-grand-prix-logan-sargeant-crashes-out-in-montreal.1801471151407304556
Here’s Carlos Sainz taking out Alexander Albon: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-canadian-grand-prix-safety-car-out-again-as-sainz-spins-and-knocks-albon-out-of-the-race.1801418562847306338
Here’s Alexander Albon passing two cars: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-canadian-grand-prix-albon-pulls-off-brilliant-double-overtake-on-ricciardo-and-ocon.1801413094418565789
Here’s Carlos Sainz on the incident
Here’s how F1 Canadian GP panned out
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