Alex Albon: “I was Licking My Lips” for Leclerc Attack

Albon was a brief podium contender in the Emilia Romagna GP at Imola, though he came off worse in his battle with Leclerc.

After 2024’s first seven rounds of the Formula 1 calendar, Williams was one of two teams yet to score a point; Alpine had broken its duck in Miami, leaving just the British squad and Sauber as those yet to register a top 10.

Alex Albon then got the team off the mark in Monaco with ninth, in a race spent tucked under Yuki Tsunoda’s gearbox, as Williams continued to suffer the after-effects of building a FW46 that tipped the scales far beyond the minimum weight limit.

A year later, Albon has scored points in all but one of the seven grands prix so far, three of them amid the top five, as the Anglo-Thai racer has found excellent form with Williams’ vastly improved 2025 package.

The metrics haven’t entirely gone his own way; Albon trails new team-mate Carlos Sainz 3-4 in their qualifying head-to-heads (sprint qualifying not included), but Sainz has endured less luck in the races and has often come off worse with strategic calls. The Spaniard’s short opening stint at Imola set him back in traffic, resulting in a battle to climb back into the points.

Albon, for his part, admitted he was slightly disappointed with fifth owing to his late-race pace; he reckoned that, had he been a little more circumspect in battling Charles Leclerc in the final stint, he might have even started to ratchet up the pressure on third-placed Oscar Piastri.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Albon mused to Sky Sports F1 after the Imola race. “On a pure race, we were fighting for P3, P4, but that’s no safety car, that’s just a pure situation.

“Maybe we were a little bit lucky with the VSC, admittedly, but at the same time, got unlucky again on the last safety car. We’ve got back-to-back P5s and coming away today a bit disappointed, which is a bit strange to say.

“I think maybe could have raced Charles a bit differently, could have done a bit better there, obviously lost out to Lewis, and then maybe could have been a bit more patient with my overtake to Charles.

“I was kind of honestly licking my lips, I thought I could even get Oscar up in front as well, such was the pace and the new tyres we had on the car.”