After out-pacing his team mate by more than a second in Williams’ heavily updated car, Alexander Albon is aiming to reach Q3 for the first time this year at home.
Williams have brought a raft of new parts for Albon’s FW44 this weekend, but his team mate Nicholas Latifi is driving the previous specification car. Albon was 1.063 seconds quicker in the updated car in Friday practice.
He said it had been difficult to judge what the revised car was capable of after rain prevented significant running in the first session.
“It felt okay,” he said, “it was different. It’s tricky because everyone didn’t do much running in FP1 and when you have an update you require mileage.
“So we haven’t had much track time today. We had a slight issue as well at the end of [second practice] so we didn’t do a proper long run. We did maybe six or seven timed laps and every time we were on-track, at least, we were looking pretty strong.”
Having Latifi in the old version of the car has helped the team judge how the updates are performing more accurately, said Albon.
“Obviously we’ve got different cars out there. It’s very wind-sensitive, just with these gusts, it’s been really tricky to drive.
“So it’s actually been quite useful to have that kind of collation of data because I think if you had both cars on the same set-up you would be going ‘okay, this feels a bit tricky, this is a tough one to drive’. But Nicky’s saying the same thing and I’m sure it’s the same down the paddock. So it’s one of them things which has been quite a good thing to have.”
The team are confident they know what changes need to be made to get the best out of the car in qualifying tomorrow, said Albon.
“It is good because sometimes updates require a big set-up change. We do need one, there is still things we need to work on, but it should be, hopefully, achievable overnight and we can get the car in a better window tomorrow.”
“I hope we get the car in a good window,” he added. “I think if we can get the balance in a place where I can use the car and push it and get confident in it then that’s in itself a good achievement.”
Albon scored his best qualifying position of the season so far at the last round in Canada. He is aiming for the top 10 today.
“Of course, if you look at it on a more and ones-and-zeroes point of view in terms of positioning, Q3 would be an obvious target for us,” he said. “So I think that would be a sensible place to hope for.”
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