Alex Albon: “I was licking my lips” for Leclerc attack, ‘thought I could even get Piastri’

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.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Alexander Albon, Williams

Photo by: Lars Baron / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

“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.”

Albon steps up as Williams continues to raise 2025 form

The ex-Red Bull driver has found excellent form in the races this season, often proving to be quicker than Sainz over the long-run stints. Across his time at Williams, he’s proven to be adept at pulling together strong tyre management races, which offers the team a bit more strategic latitude – remember Australia 2022, where he did all but the final lap on the same set of tyres to clinch 10th?

Now that Williams is in a position to challenge regularly amid the middle reaches of the points, Albon is finally getting the plaudits he deserves – having spent much of his post-Red Bull career honing his craft amid the lower midfield.

But, per his comments about Imola, Albon feels that there’s more available; Williams might not have the top-end pace needed to stick the car in the top four on the grid, but its slow-burn race pace has put the FW47 in the equation – even with little development work over the year.

And that’s reassuring, even if Albon has had to pinch himself slightly; he’s admitted to being slightly dubious about whether the Grove squad’s performance will last – and hadn’t expected to be particularly strong at Imola.

“It’s a weird one. Honestly, I keep telling myself it won’t happen again, and it’s this race, and then we go to the next race, and we’re still very quick again, and it’s a bit like, is it circumstantial, is it not?

“I would honestly say Miami and here, we’ve been quick. In my opinion, almost unexpectedly quick this weekend; I expected Miami to be good, but not here, and it kind of opens the window for what else.

“Maybe next week [at Monte Carlo] we’re going to be good. I actually think Monaco won’t be too bad, I think Barcelona we’re going to struggle, but let’s keep going, enjoying this while it lasts.”

Alex Albon, Williams

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

Williams team principal James Vowles explained in a pre-Imola media session that the addition of Sainz was spurring Albon on to deliver his best – and that a genuinely collaborative relationship between the two has given both drivers a fresh perspective.

Explaining the team harmony, Vowles stated that although Albon had occasionally worried about the idea of Williams starting to favour Sainz, his non-political stance at the team has maintained that collaboration through the opening rounds.

“Alex, like any human being, needs to be pushed in order to get the absolute most out of them,” Vowles said. “I don’t know any elite athlete that is able to find the absolute limit by themselves, they need someone else to show them that a bit. So, first and foremost, that’s it.

“We’re now looking at the data, Alex is able to see two or three corners where Carlos is doing something slightly different, and they bounce off each other.

“Alex has no politics in him whatsoever at all, so it actually allows Carlos to be completely himself. He doesn’t have to be worried about having a situation being thrown back against him.

“That’s actually what caused part of the problem in Miami, he was worried that that was the circumstance and it’s not whatsoever at all.

“With Alex, we’ve just got an individual who loves driving and racing cars fast and loves talking about it, and from the first meetings we had, Alex was telling everything to Carlos: ‘Try this, do this, have a look at this, I did this in this corner and it’ll help you get there.’

“That’s not normal. Normally in teams, what you do is one of your drivers tries to hold that all back so you gain your advantage for a longer period of time.”

Additional reporting by Ben Hunt