Alex Albon: “It was a boring but tough race”

Alex Albon has exclaimed that his Monaco Grand Prix outing was a ‘boring’ one, after the Thai drivers fourteenth place finish at the Circuit de Monaco marked the fifth consecutive race of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship without a points finish for the Williams Racing team.

Albon was left with an uphill task to climb inside the points paying positions after qualifying in thirteenth place, and the former Oracle Red Bull Racing drivers prospects would prove to become even tougher after his FW45 was equipped with the medium tyre to start the race.

The Thai driver was able to make it through the opening lap unscathed and still in his original grid position, despite a tight squeeze with Lance Stroll down at the Grand Hotel Hairpin threatening to stunt any further progress. However, Albon would soon find his medium tyres overheating by lap eighteen, forcing the Williams pit-wall to call him in for a set of hard tyres.  

Albon had looked set to see out the remaining sixty laps of the Grand Prix out on his new set of hard tyres and before the eventual threat of rain did arrive, the Williams driver looked an outside bet to potentially claim a points finish.

“A lot of drivers started on the Hard tyres which created a bit of a train but the Hard tyre was so much better than the Medium tyre”, Albon stated. “It was basically a race you wanted to be on the Hard tyres as soon as possible.

“We tried to hold onto it a little bit and grained massively on the Mediums. The pace was good for a short time but once the tyres overheated, it was difficult to do anything more.”

But by the time of the eventual rainfall around the Circuit de Monaco, Albon, who was running in eighteenth place at the time, would lose out on any potential chance of a points finish as the whole grid quickly moved onto the intermediate tyre.

Despite coming out from his pit stop in nineteenth place, Albon would commendably work his way up to fourteenth position to take the chequered flag. While the Williams driver admitted the rain created a sense of excitement in what he had described as a ‘boring’ race, it ultimately didn’t prove to provide a favourable result.

“It was a boring but tough race; the rain was fun and created something but it didn’t really change our result or shake things up as much as I thought it would.“

Logan Sargeant: “Not a great day but we’ll take what we can from it”

Logan Sargeant’s first experience of Formula 1 action around the streets of Monte-Carlo would prove to be a steep learning curve for the young American driver. After qualifying in eighteenth place, the Williams driver would find himself attempting to avoid serious contact from the late breaking Nico Hülkenberg heading into Mirabeau.

Sargeant was able to avoid any serious damage and Hülkenberg was rewarded with a subsequent five-second time penalty for his audacious move, but the Williams drivers day would soon turn sour, as like his teammate, Sargeant would struggle to maintain the pace of the medium tyre and was forced to change over to the hard compound on lap seventeen.

Fortune would prove to not be on the side of the American, as a puncture on the following lap would force Sargeant to swiftly return to the pits for a used set of soft tyres. Sargeant remarked it was ‘far from ideal’ to begin his Grand Prix in such a manner.

“Definitely a tough one. It started okay with the first ten laps or so then I had a lot of degradation on the Medium tyre. Once we did get on the Hard we had a puncture within a couple of laps and so had to box for the Quali tyre and take that long, so that was far from ideal.“

By the time of the rain, the damage had ultimately already been done when it came to securing a positive result, leaving Sargeant with little to no opportunity of using the wet weather to his advantage.

Sargeant would come home for an eventual eighteenth place finish in his first Monaco Grand Prix, and despite his struggles, Sargeant is looking to focus on the positives he can take away from Monaco.

“Once the rain came it was about learning about the Inter tyre. I had a couple of small lock-ups in the wet which I need to clean up so, all in all, not a great day but we’ll take what we can from it and move on.

“There are positives; I’ve driven the car in the wet now so I know what it’s like and I don’t think it was too bad at times, just suffered with a lot of deg. It would have been interesting to see how that Hard stint went so it was unfortunate to pick that puncture up.“

Full attention now turns to the upcoming Spanish Grand Prix, where Sargeant will be taking great confidence into after remarking that he ‘loves’ the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

“I’m on the sim Tuesday so we’ll reset and go to Barcelona. I’m good around there, I love it, it’s a track I know well and we’ll aim to get things going in a better direction.”