Albon concedes he caught Bearman 'at the worst possible moment' as he reflects on costly FP1 crash in Mexico

Alex Albon says he caught Ollie Bearman at “exactly the worst moment” in the wake of their unusual collision during first practice for the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Albon lost control of his Williams FW46 through Turn 9 at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez and as he attempted to correct the slide he encountered Bearman’s Ferrari, who was not on a hot lap and was moving off-line to let his opponent through.

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Albon struck Bearman’s slow-moving car and spun into the barriers at Turn 10, causing substantial damage to the Williams.

Stewards investigated the collision but deemed that no further action was necessary. But such was the extent of the damage to the car that Albon was unable to participate in the second practice session.

“I think he got told very late that I was coming behind him,” Albon said. “He tried his best to speed up into the two or three high speed corners, we caught each other at exactly the worst moment on track that you can, I think there was a 100km/h difference in terms of speed.

“I don’t blame myself but I don’t think it’s all on Ollie, he could have been told a bit better and of course also it’s new, the closing speeds in F1 are much higher than F2, but it’s not his fault.”

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Albon finished the day with just seven laps to his name but is hopeful that the atypical second practice session, which was broadly dedicated to drivers trialling Pirelli’s prototype 2025 tyres, will lessen the impact of his absence from the track.

“It’s frustrating – we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Albon said. “In some ways possibly less was learnt by other teams because they weren’t running tyres from this year, so I’m hoping it means the lack of track time is less compromising.”

Albon’s early exit left Franco Colapinto with the lion’s share of the work at Williams, and he finished the second practice session in 15th place.

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“It felt good, we did a pretty decent change for FP2, and the car felt a bit less alive so that’s something to look at,” Colapinto said.

“But the key was to get up to speed and get used to the track, that’s going well, I’m feeling quite comfortable with the track and the car, so that’s going in the right direction.”