Albon Left Frustrated Following Q1 Exit, Believes It's Not 'Driving Style' Getting in the Way
Following his Q1 exit, Alex Albon was vocal about there being a problem with the FW48 that he feels hasn't been adequately addressed through the first three rounds.
Albon Left Frustated Following Another Q1 Exit Jayce Illman - Getty Images The Williams teammates were separated by 0. 161 seconds in Q1 ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix Saturday morning, as Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon felt right at the first cut line, with Sainz advancing into Q2 and Albon failing to for the third straight qualifying. His third straight Q1 exit left Albon upset.
Albon isn't happy with his FW48's performance, sharing his frustrations over the radio and alluding to it being dismissed as a driver problem. When Albon's race engineer, James Urwin, came over the radio to share their Q1 exit, he did so by saying, "You probably don’t want to know, but you can probably guess. " "Yes, I complain for 3 races in a row that there’s something wrong, but I’m sure that it’s my driving style," Albon responded.
When asked post-qualifying what the comment specifically meant, Albon deflected but didn't retract his feelings. "I don’t want to go into details, I think as a team we just have to understand where it’s coming from, it’s been there since Australia, I would say," Albon told race media. "It’s been hard to compare because it’s either one car on track or the other one in the garage.
But this weekend, both cars have been running smoothly, so it’s been easy to see. So we’ll have a dig, and we’ll figure it out. " In his official team's released statement, Albon expanded, saying that some work has been done and some issues fixed since Melbourne and China, but he still feels like there's one big issue with the car that the team has yet to track down.