Albon focused on Baku after ‘weekend to forget’ for Williams driver in Monaco

Alex Albon could not repeat his Australia and Miami heroics in Monaco as the Williams driver endured a “scruffy” race and a “weekend to forget” that ended in retirement…

The Thai driver has scored all three of Williams’ points this season, but when he went straight on at Turn 1 and punctured the tyre, it forced another stop just four laps after the first and pushed him out of contention.

He then reported some “unexpected bouncing” on the straights, with the team subsequently opting to retire the car.

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“It was a tricky day out there and a bit of a scruffy performance from my side, too,” he said. “The conditions meant that getting the brakes in the right window was really challenging, especially with all the variation that a drying track brings and the red flags.

“The car felt good whenever we had clean air though, and I did feel competitive at points, so there are some positives to take away. Unfortunately, towards the end of the race I had an issue with the car which meant I had to retire. I think it’s probably a weekend to forget for us, but that’s how it goes sometimes. We’ll focus on the next one.”

His team mate Nicholas Latifi was on the back foot when he hit the barrier early in the race, but he continued and ultimately finished 15th.

“That was something strange,” said Latifi of the minor crash. “I have to understand what happened, because for me I did nothing wrong there. I mean I was braking and then the car started accelerating again as I was turning, it’s almost like the throttle peddle didn’t get stuck but the throttle peddle came back on and it just started pushing into the barrier, so that was very, very strange. Without that I don’t know exactly what would have happened.

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“Obviously, we were detached from the back already from the beginning. I had some good pace on the inter tyre to catch back up, even running through the runoff in Turn 1 once. Then it was tricky that last stint on the option tyre. The balance I knew from last one was not where it needed to be and I was going to struggle with the graining. I was just kind of surviving until the end.

“I managed to pick up two places from guys we were actually racing against, so there where some positives there. It’s just a race like this, so chaotic, so much happening, and just that beginning incident with the car, for whatever reason pushing, it’s just really frustrating, because again, we would have been more in sequence with everyone, and then you don’t know what could have happened then.”

Williams and the rest of the teams will retune their machines at their respective bases before heading out to Baku next week for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.