Alexander Albon was pleased to keep Lewis Hamilton at bay in F1 Belgian GP points, as Carlos Sainz reckons gamble didn’t work for him.
After the Friday issue in F1 Belgian GP for Williams’ Albon, it looked like the Thai will have a tough weekend. But the team turned it around on Saturday after he qualified fifth. He braved the Sunday with lighter rear wing and the gamble worked for him after how the grand prix panned out.
He lost a place to George Russell at the start, but managed to hang on with him for good part. He had Lewis Hamilton on his tail for long but the Brit did not have enough legs to get through, as the Thai’s downforce levels helped him to stay afloat ahead of the Ferrari driver.
“Yeah, very happy, I would say kind of knew that we would struggle a bit on the wetter tyres,” said Albon to media. “We saw it in Silverstone, we saw it here, just struggling, especially in the high speed on the inter tyres. When everyone starts degging, we are actually fine. I was catching George back up towards the inter stint.
“And when we put the dry tyres on, we had a good chunk of race where we were within half or two seconds of George and we were looking quite good. I dropped off a little bit, but honestly, it was not bad at all. To finish ahead of the next big car, that’s very strong and enough pace to hold off Lewis. It was looking actually to be benfitting the wet starts, the pitlane starters, they all jumped up their rear wing massively and around the track like this in the wet, it can be up to a second a lap.
“So, I was little bit worried about Lewis and Kimi coming through the field very quickly, but we went the other way, we took off wing, so we were little bit worried about it. But I would say, thank God the race was mostly dry,” summed up Albon, who didn’t wished to pit first at the first stop, considering the track position he was in. The Thai noted that he was driving the car a bit too quick.
“No, I didn’t want to be the first one because it was little bit awkward, there were lot of river strips in the middle of the braking zones, I didn’t want to be the one to explore that, especially after the position we were in,” said Albon. “Yeah, maybe a little bit safe but, especially in our position but better be safe than sorry.
“I felt quite good, I struggled little bit with my tyres, but I was honestly driving, a bit too quick for the pace of the car, I was just trying to keep up with the group around me and others behind. If I did my own race, I think my race pace in the end would be better, it wasn’t harder to drive.” While Albon found luck and pace, teammate Sainz had nothing in the main race after success in sprint.
Lack of grip hampered his qualifying, but the team found out that the set-up was not optimum, which is why they elected to change it and start from the pitlane. He opted for higher downforce in anticipation of rain, but it turned out to be otherwise and none of his gamble worked in the end.
“In qualifying, I think we went in the wrong direction with the set-up and we were seeing something in the car that was worth a change in parc ferme to change the car and gave us also the opportunity to put a rear wing for the wet, in case it was a full wet race,” said Sainz to media. “But it didn’t pay off.
“In qualifying we saw we wanted to learn something of…we were seeing an anomaly on my car in quali, that gave us an opportunity to start from the pitlane and try something, maybe gambling into a wet race and unfortunately, that the race only lasted 8-10 laps in the wet.
“I tried something different. I said, in case anyone starts degging like hell and we are the first ones to…I was out of the points at that stage and we had a slow pit stop that cost us few positions. We were quite far from the points and at that stage, we just selected to try something,” summed up Sainz.
Here’s how F1 Belgian GP panned out