Alexander Albon described his first point for Williams as “completely unimaginable” after the team’s strategist predicted both cars would finish at the back.
The Williams driver ran 57 laps on the same set of hard tyres he started the race on before pitting on the final lap for soft tyres, rejoining ahead of Zhou Guanyu in tenth place and holding the Alfa Romeo off to take the final point.
Albon said that was a much better result than the team had expected. Their pre-race expectations were more pessimistic after Albon was sent to the back of the grid following his disqualification from qualifying.
“It was strange,” Albon said. “It always seems like that C2 tyre suits our car and there’s suiting a car and then there’s that – where it was almost like I felt like I was doing qualifying laps for the last 30 laps of the race. So it’s pretty special.
“I know for a fact we went into the race, the strategist tells you, ‘OK, this is our best performance, this is what we…