Alexander Albon: “We were only a couple tenths behind P5, so I’m really proud”

Alexander Albon showed again what he is capable of during Qualifying for the São Paulo Grand Prix on Friday, even if the Thai driver was on the wrong side of the cut-off point at the end of Q2.

The Williams Racing driver was only a few tenths of a second away from the top five at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, but with how close the field was during Qualifying, the gap meant he was out of the session.

Albon hopes the good grid spot for Saturday’s Sprint race can open up opportunities for Williams to score points, something that has been hard to come by in the opening twenty races of the season.

“As a car, what makes our tyres work is different to most people, so we were really doing our own thing today,” said Albon.  “We did a really good job with P11 and at a track like this, it’s not easy and it was really close out there.

“We were only a couple tenths behind P5, so I’m really proud and think we did a great job. This hopefully sets us up for the rest of the weekend, but we’ll see what we can do out there tomorrow.”  

“I think there was room for a bit more” – Nicholas Latifi

Team-mate Nicholas Latifi was eliminated in Q1 by the narrowest of margins, with the Canadian admitting to being frustrated not to join his team-mate in Q2.

Latifi was one of the first cars to switch to the dry weather slick tyres but was unable to find a good rhythm, and as a result was unable to advance into Q2, missing out by just over a tenth of a second in sixteenth.

The Canadian, competing in his penultimate race with Williams before he leaves the team at the end of the season, felt there was certainly more pace in the car than he was able to show, so to be eliminated was disappointing.

“In these conditions it was quite clear when we went out on the inters that at some point it was going to switch to slicks,” said Latifi.

“So it was tricky to try to judge the conditions and we tried to build the rhythm and get the right lap in at the end and I think I was among one of the first few cars to switch to slicks, so it could have gone either way.

“It was frustrating as you hope to be able to make a bit of a difference in the session, but we had some issues during the session as well, and without that I think there was room for a bit more.”

Nicholas Latifi will start sixteenth on Saturday for the Sprint race – Credit: Pirelli Motorsport