Mexico City has been a case of mixed fortunes for the Williams F1 team thus far, with one driver struggling and the other in a good place – but stymied by a penalty of his own making.
Alex Albon’s recent struggles continued as he encountered brake issues for much of the weekend, and come qualifying he couldn’t better a lowly 17th.
In contrast Carlos Sainz breezed through the first two sessions in P11 and P5, and then took P7 in Q3 – ahead of Oscar Piastri – before his five-place hit from the US GP clash with Kimi Antonelli dropped him down.
For Albon this was just the latest in a run of seven painful weekends that have seen him start 13th or lower.
“We’ve been chasing a lot, never feeling that comfortable with the car,” he said when I asked about his Mexican troubles. “And then the qualifying was even one of the most painful ones.
“So I can’t tell you what it was. Sliding around from Turn 1 to Turn 16, and brakes were an issue. But you should still be getting through to Q2 without the brake issue. So I can’t put my finger on it, but yeah, it was a strange, strange session.
Albon has had a run of tricky qualifying sessions of late that have seen him fail to make it out of Q1 several times.
“It feels like I’ve just dropped into a bit of a bit of a tricky spot with the car, so I need to kind of get on top of it. But it’s not been that easy.
“Generally, the pace is also not there, so we need to figure out what’s going on. But it’s not been comfortable.”
Sainz meanwhile has begun to have the upper hand on a regular basis, and in Mexico he was keen to overlook the costly grid penalty.
“Today I’m going to focus on the positives,” he said. “Because it was one of my best qualifyings of the year, if not my best Q3 lap, probably of the year. I’m honestly very happy, feeling more and more at home with the car every session that I do, knowing where to go with setup, with tyres.
“Just put there a really solid lap to fight it out with the McLaren and the Mercedes for the top seven. And we managed to get it there. So very happy with that.”
He’s not been without a few problems of his own: “In FP3 I was struggling with some issues, but we changed a couple of things in the car, and it seemed to be solved. I think we were also struggling a bit with tyres when the track temp was dropping now, but I could get my way around it.”
Sainz clearly has some good momentum at the moment.
“I think experience, in the end, is just helping me, going through all that pain in the middle of the season with tyres, feel like I’ve learned a lot of lessons that I need to apply with this car.
“And today, we were very reactive. We struggled a bit in Q1 but then we got it, everything going in in Q2 and Q3 and we managed to maximise the pace of the car.”
He added: “Very happy, very proud of the team, because we’re making huge progress through the year, and even if the pace was there at the beginning, now putting things together just shows what we can do.”
Giving up five places on Sunday will be painful, but he remains optimistic.
“Just get a good start, see what the cooling of the car allows me to do,” he said. “I’m going to be quick, like expected, probably fastest midfield car, like I’ve been all the last few races in race pace.
“But here I’ll probably be a bit more limited by the track layout, by the cooling of the car, and see what we can do to recover. I’ll do my best. And if the engine or the brakes are running too hot, I’ll just back off and have to bring it home. But I’ll push.”
Adam Cooper F1 