Alex Albon has expressed frustration at himself after witnessing what might have been given the heroics of Williams team-mate Carlos Sainz in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n
Albon went into the race on a run of scoring points in 11 of the 13 grands prix in which he had seen the chequered flag this season, and with the Baku City Circuit expected to yield a strong haul for the Grove-based team.<\/p>\n
The Thai-British driver, however, wrecked his hopes of another top-10 finish when he uncharacteristically clipped a barrier on the inside of Turn 1, breaking the front-left suspension on his car, leading to him starting on the back row of the grid.<\/p>\n
Albon could only muster 13th at the line, with his scruffy weekend underlined when he tangled with Alpine’s Franco Colapinto at one stage, earning a 10-second time penalty for causing a collision.<\/p>\n
Now in his fourth season with Williams, Albon has still to score a podium. In stark contrast, despite what has been a difficult year for Sainz since his move from Ferrari, the Spanish driver scored the team’s first top-three finish in a full race for eight years.<\/p>\n
“Firstly, I’m really happy for Carlos,” said Albon, speaking to the media, including RacingNews365. “He drove a very solid weekend from qualifying to the race. He was mistake-free, which, with the weather and the conditions, was not easy.<\/p>\n
“And the car was quick. I’m frustrated at myself because I haven’t scored points in a weekend when it was maybe the easiest of them to score points, but it happens.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“At the same time, it’s great for the constructors’ championship with the points Carlos scored, and great for himself as well.<\/p>\n
“He’s always been extremely quick, but he’s been unfortunate, so good to get it. It’s good to shake off the bad luck, so good for him.”<\/p>\n
Albon’s frustration was amplified by the fact that he knew he had a quick car underneath him all weekend, particularly during the race, but he was unable to make it count.<\/p>\n
“I think we must have been one of the only cars that could just about get away with overtaking other cars in DRS trains,” remarked Albon.<\/p>\n
“We had the pace to do it. We obviously were quick on track. Rightfully so, a lot of the midfield cars reacted to me pitting, and would try to cover me immediately out of the pit lane.<\/p>\n
“It then got a bit scrappy with Franco – my fault – but when we did have clean air, which was maybe for 10 laps of the race, we were quick. We just didn’t really ever get there.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, the damage was done in qualifying.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Albon has expressed frustration at himself after witnessing what might have been given the heroics of Williams…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3007,1687,3010,3008,3011,3009,831,372,6537,832,3006,3005,3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-156794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}