Why Albon trimmed downforce from his Williams as others added it for Spa rain

The surprise package of Spa qualifying was Alex Albon, who popped up in P5 at the end of Q3.

The Williams driver had endured a frustrating sprint qualifying, with PU issues contributing to his 16^th place on the grid.

In the sprint itself he finished in the same position, and prior to main qualifying he opted to make some aero changes – and somewhat counter intuitively given the rain forecast for Sunday he actually took downforce off while others were adding it.

Of course, it’s all relative to where you start from, and he felt that he was running too much wing.

He was ninth in Q1 and then just made it through to the last session with P10 in Q2. His fifth place in Q3 came as surprise to him as much as anyone else as he headed a very closely matched group behind the top four.

“It’s always nice to be on that side of it,” he said when I asked him about the session. “Really happy. I would say we were quite draggy on the sprint race, and we decided to drop some wing out of the car just to be in line more with other people. I felt like in the sprint race, I was quick, but couldn’t do anything behind any other cars.

“So it means going into qualifying, everything feels a little bit trickier, because you’re obviously sliding around a little bit more, the tyres fall away from you more as well. We fixed the deployment, which was the biggest difference from Friday to today.”

Albon conceded that he didn’t expect the change to work so effectively.

“I would say on pure pace, I felt less competitive during qualifying than I was at any point before the before the qualifying session. So it felt tricky. I mean, I was P10 in Q2 and I didn’t feel that happy.

“I didn’t really know where I could get more positions, let’s say. And then Q3 happened, and I found a chunk of time. So I put it down to tyres, as it always is, and we found the sweet spot today on the last run.”

He added: “I didn’t feel comfortable. I felt like when we when we took off the down force, we made the car much harder to drive, and the tyres weren’t lasting the whole lap. So it was becoming harder and harder.

“You go quicker in sector one and sector two, and sector two, and then you go slower again. You never felt like you could get all the lap in one place, and then in Q3 I did. I got it all in one. So I was really happy.”

Albon wasn’t concerned about compromising his wet weather form for the race, indicating that he still has a decent level of downforce.

“We were so far on the draggy side, though, that we’re still okay. If you remember Silverstone, I think it was the Red Bulls and ourselves, we were quite low on downforce, and we paid the price when it rained on Sunday.

“So we made sure not to overdo it. But yeah, hopefully we’ll be okay. I still think as a team, we struggle a bit more in the wet compared to some other cars out there. So if it can stay dry as long as possible, that will be great.”

He remains confident about his race form, although hopes of a dry race receded on a wet Sunday morning.

“We obviously haven’t done enough laps yet to really set up the car into a perfect place. I think a lot of that will come back to us just with setup changes.

“Being a sprint-based weekend, we haven’t really been able to do much. We’ve got more downforce. I think we need to see, because it hasn’t been the easiest weekend so far just to get the laps together.

“I think our race pace is strong. It’s hard to know, because I’ve been in DRS train the whole race this morning, but my race pace was good on Friday. I think we’ll be okay.

“We just need to kind of get some clear air, and I hope maybe the cars in front clear off and I can do my race.”