20 November 2023 , 08:43
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Alex Albon lamented the timing of the Las Vegas Grand Prix safety car after Williams flattered to deceive in Sin City.
The sleeping giants were poised for a big points haul on their third and final trip to the US at the weekend. Both drivers qualified very well, Albon fifth on the grid while rookie team-mate Logan Sargeant impressed by securing the sixth grid slot.
But a dream qualifying session was followed by a nightmare scenario in the race itself. Both got off to a decent enough start, but incidents outside their control ended up costing them dearly.
Those who pitted during the two safety car periods ended up much better off than those, like Albon, who stuck to the one-stop plan. The British-Thai racer dropped to ninth before an error late in the race dropped him outside the points, where Sargeant already was.
Albon said of his race: "Honestly, I don't think it was as bad as it looked. The safety car probably went against us today. We knew we were struggling with the graining. We did some things to try to help it, but we couldn't really get away from it.
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"I know how to look after the tyres, I know what I have to do to stop the graining, but you can't do it because you've got a chain of seven cars right behind you. You're fighting every lap, you're having to defend every corner. You're getting the dirt on your tyres. It's like an endless cycle of pain."
Albon said he could pinpoint the moment things started to go wrong for him out on track. He added: "I was enjoying it to a point. I had a really good safety car restart, got back past [Lance] Stroll.
"For about five laps I thought, 'This is great'. And then I could see the front-right [tyre] opening up and then the rear-right opening up. And I thought, 'Okay, we're going to struggle for a bit'. As a positive, the tyres cleaned up with two laps to go, which is a bit late."
Team-mate Sargeant concurred that much of what happened to Williams during the race was beyond their control. The American said: "Honestly, I don't think there's a lot we did wrong today. As a team, we came around fifth and sixth after the first lap which was the goal. I felt like we managed that first stint relatively well but as expected the quicker cars started to come through towards the end of it.
"We went with our strategy and boxed for the hard tyre with the plan to take us to the end. I don't think we were in a bad position until that second safety car came out and it killed any chance we had. We didn't really have any option to come in and fit a new set. Others did which put them at an advantage, but we tried to hold on until the end. As a weekend, we maximised our plan and executed well it was just a bit of bad fortune today."