“Leaving Miami with more points is really special” – Alex Albon

Alex Albon continued his impressive start to life at Williams Racing, after finishing in ninth-place at the inaugural Miami Grand Prix. On the other side of the garage, Nicholas Latifi continued to struggle and languished in fourteenth.

Albon performed valiantly at the Miami International Autodrome despite having started in eighteenth-place. The Thai driver worked his way through the field and did well to capitalise on others misfortunes.

The Williams driver was in a battle at the end of the race with Esteban Ocon, who was holding up the pack as his team-mate ahead had a five-second penalty.

Albon initially crossed the line in tenth but was promoted to ninth, hours after the race had finished. Fernando Alonso was awarded a second, five-second time penalty for gaining an advantage off the circuit.

Albon was very happy with his second points finish of the season after finding “the pace that I knew we had”.

“Today we found the pace that I knew we had all weekend. We had a tough Qualifying yesterday which meant we were slightly out of position with a well-performing car, so overtaking was possible and we made good progress.

“We had a little bit of fortune with some of the cars ahead of us getting caught up in incidents, but the important thing is that we were in a position to make the most of those opportunities when they came. The team did a great job today, especially with the strategy, and so leaving Miami with more points is really special.”

“We were having to manage some issues” – Nicholas Latifi

Latifi’s woeful start to the 2022 season continued in Miami, after the Canadian crossed the line in a disappointing fourteenth-place, well-behind his team-mate.

Latifi started the race in nineteenth but opted to begin on the hard compound, with the aim of running deep into the race and hoping for a safety car. Unfortunately for Latifi he pitted several laps before the race’s sole safety car, an unlucky circumstance for the Williams driver.

Latifi later explained after the race that he had in fact been dealing with some issues in the car from early on in the Grand Prix, which he said “were holding us back”.

“It was a very difficult afternoon out there. On the one hand it is very positive for the team to score the point with Alex, especially after where we started from today, but on our side we had too many issues. It was difficult and we were having to manage some issues early on which were holding us back, including struggling with the tyres and lacking pace and we need to investigate those.”