Alexander Albon has not raced at Circuit Zandvoort for seven years, with the Thai driver admitting it will take a little bit of time to adapt to the track this weekend.
The Williams Racing driver arrives in The Netherlands on the back of a positive weekend in Belgium last weekend that saw him start sixth and score a point in tenth place.
Albon knows the Zandvoort track is completely different to the Spa-Francorchamps track from last weekend, and he knows Saturday will be extremely important to get a good position on the grid and put the team in a place where they can break into the top ten again on Sunday.
“Coming out of a successful weekend, we know Zandvoort is a very different track to Spa and we’ll need to adapt to the different requirements, with a much higher downforce and on a difficult track for overtaking,” said Albon.
“Saturday will be an important day for us and, whilst we’d like to have a repeat of Spa, that will obviously be slightly difficult.
“I haven’t raced at this circuit since 2015, so will work to leverage Friday and Saturday to learn the track and see what we can play for over the weekend.”
Zandvoort “very narrow with little room for error” – Nicholas Latifi
Team-mate Nicholas Latifi says returning to Zandvoort last year was an ‘enjoyable’ experience, and he cannot wait to get going again this weekend.
The Canadian crashed during Qualifying last year, as did his then team-mate George Russell, and is hoping for a cleaner weekend this time around as he still seeks his first points of the season at a track that gives very little room for error.
“I’m excited to get going at Zandvoort for the second round of this triple-header,” said Latifi. “Going back to Zandvoort last year was very enjoyable.
“It’s an old-school track and probably one of the more fun single lap qualis on the calendar. There are high-speed corners, banked corners and it’s very narrow with little room for error which makes it a track with a lot of unique characteristics.
“The fan atmosphere really made it something special last year and I’m sure it’ll be the same again.”
Nicholas Latifi is aiming for a strong weekend at Zandvoort – Credit: Williams Racing