Albon gives verdict on Colapinto’s Turn 1 move in Singapore

Alex Albon shared his view on team mate Franco Colapinto’s overtake on the opening lap in Singapore, which saw him make up a handful of places with a single move at the race start as the Thai-British driver lost out.

Williams ended the weekend with zero points after the Argentine just missed out in P11 and Albon was forced to retire with a suspected power unit issue, but the team looked strong across most of the sessions.

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At the very beginning of the race, Colapinto went for a gap down the inside, going four-wide with other cars to progress past his team mate, Carlos Sainz and Yuki Tsunoda in one fell swoop.

While it looked like an impressive overtake, Albon was left deflated as he was sent wide and lost places at the start, going on to end his race in the pits after his car suffered cooling issues.

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Speaking after the race, he said: “Obviously the engine issue is a shame, but honestly I don’t think it would have changed the race. I think we lost it at the beginning of the race. The car was really strong, it’s been really quick all weekend.

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“It’s one of those ones where normally you score points and the car’s not quite there to score points, it’s satisfying. This weekend we’ve done the opposite thing – it feels like we’ve always had a car in the top 10 this weekend and we’ve come away pointless.

“It’s something to review, but regarding the Turn 1 thing… Franco, the move was on, it was just a bit of a shame that everyone was going into the corner and then everyone hesitated to turn left and had to let Franco past. Obviously I was on the other side of it, so it happens.”

Colapinto: ‘By stopping a lap too late we lost a place in the points’

There has been praise for Colapinto’s bold move, with F1 TV’s Will Buxton calling it “absolute magic” in a post on X.

The Williams youngster appeared similarly proud that he was able to pull off the overtake, stating after the race that “I did the best start I could” to help the team move into the points paying positions.

“There was a pretty nice gap and I went for it and it worked out,” he said. “Here, you know, the start is very important and to leave Turn 3 in front of some cars is always nice. You are in a match for a position later in the race. I was in a position to finish in the points.

“Unfortunately it didn’t happen, but it’s still a decent three first races of my life and I’m close to the points again. We need to focus a little bit more, focus a bit more on quali. We should have been in Q3 and today we should have been able to finish P10, but just need to keep nailing it and we’ll be better for the next race.”

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In a tricky midfield battle, the Grove outfit lost valuable points to their rivals Haas, as Nico Hulkenberg crossed the line in P9 to extend their lead over Williams to 15 points in the constructors’ standings.

With the combination of upgrades to Albon’s car and a strong performance over the weekend, it seems that the team was expecting to leave Marina Bay with a lot more.

“I feel like maybe this was a weekend where we could have closed the gap even more, but there’s still a few races left,” Albon commented. “I don’t know how many, but it’s not over yet. We’ll put our heads down.

“We need to review how the upgrades worked over the weekend. We haven’t really delved into it much, so we’ve got three weeks now until Austin to try and make it a little bit faster.”