Alexander Albon was surprised by how Williams were good in F1 Miami GP, as he expands on the team orders situation.
All through the F1 Miami GP weekend, Williams were in prime position to secure a Top 5 finish. Both Albon and Carlos Sainz showed good pace to secure a Top 10 finish at least. The Thai finished a good fourth in the sprint, but was handed a penalty to drop out of points.
He made it up in the grand prix after finishing fifth. He even cleared Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the process and had his teammate George Russell (P3) and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen (P4) in his sights – something he hasn’t done so much even when he was driving alongside the Dutchman.
The pace was surprising for whole of Williams team. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Max from start to finish, not even in my Red Bull days,” said Albon. “So it was nice to see him. At the end of the race we were, mostly, one of the quickest cars on-track. So it’s a great turnaround.
“I think this weekend has surprised us, for sure. We’ve been speaking about it in every debrief so far this weekend, why are we good this weekend? It’s not a question mark, but what is it about this track that really suits us and then I think what we understand is, for the most part generally, it doesn’t have corners that we don’t like, let’s say it like that.
“From the first lap of FP1, the car was in a good place, and we could build very quickly which, in a Sprint race weekend, is very important. You can look at it both ways. You can look at it like, ‘Do we have the gap now that we don’t need to focus on this year,’ or do we need to keep going? Realistically, we’re not going to get fourth in the constructors, so the focus is trying to keep fifth.
“We likely have a different upgrade plan to the other teams this year and we are focused on next year as well. But at the same time, yes. I’m enjoying this year a lot so far,” summed up Albon, adding also about the situation Williams is in with regards to its decision of no updates for rest of the 2025 F1 season, as the focus shifts to 2026.
The grand prix didn’t happen without some drama for Albon. The Thai initially lost his place to Sainz in the opening few laps. It looked like that Williams wanted to hold position, unaware of Albon’s intentions and overall pace. They tried to alert him on the radio about the same, but they were too late.
By the time Albon was alerted, he was already in the process of passing Sainz at Turn 11, which surprised the Spaniard since he was unaware that the Thai wasn’t told about it yet. “It was most probably in the exact moment of that message when I overtook him. I think, if we stayed together a little bit longer, then I would’ve been told that [to hold position] – but, for that time, we were still free to race,” he said.
“I think it was just a delay between the two cars. That being said, we had strong pace on my side of the garage, I struggled a little bit in the first couple of laps, I thought I had damage from the Turn 3 incident, so I took it easy, I had some snaps, it just off-setting my focus little bit. But once I got into the rhythm of the race, we were really quick, I think if you look at the race pace, it proves that we were strong.”
Here’s Alexander Albon making moves: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-miami-grand-prix-albon-and-sainz-both-complete-overtaking-moves-on-the-same-lap.1831228547334607671
