'The tortoise wins the race' – Albon reflects on ‘intense' Italian GP as Colapinto assesses his debut performance

Alex Albon has reflected on an "intense" Italian Grand Prix where the "tortoise won the race" as he bagged valuable points for Williams in P9. Rookie team mate Franco Colapinto also scored an impressive P12 in his debut F1 race to mark a strong showing for the Grove squad.

After qualifying in the top 10, Albon maintained his position for the entirety of the race, keeping pace with Kevin Magussen who had received a 10-second time penalty for contact with Pierre Gasly.

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His consistent drive meant that he was promoted to ninth place and received an important two points after the Dane’s penalty was added. Albon also faced his battles behind as he was closely pursued by Fernando Alonso towards the end of the race, but the Williams man managed to stay ahead on 36-lap-old hard tyres.

Williams had opted for a one-stop strategy at Monza – like winner Charles Leclerc – and, while it meant the pair had to manage their tyres carefully, it helped them finish strongly with Colapinto 13 seconds away from scoring points.

“That was an intense race,” Albon said after the session. “Not intense in terms of cars around me, I was in the middle of nowhere, but Kevin [Magnussen] was pulling away with his 10-second penalty and Fernando [Alonso] was catching me up with his new set of tyres so yeah, we were struggling actually.

“It was one of those ones where the tortoise wins the race and just slowly, slowly and I just knew I had to keep being consistent, make sure that front left didn’t open up. And then as Fernando was coming there was a bit of ‘Jaws’ music and then we just hung on.”

Courtesy of Albon's finishes at Monaco, Silverstone and Monza, Williams find themselves on six points, seven points behind eighth-placed Alpine. With an increasingly competitive battle for the tail end of the top 10 every race weekend, the Grove outfit are determined to take every opportunity they can.

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Albon explained: “We need to take these moments, we don’t have these moments often and obviously we missed out in Zandvoort when we really should have scored some points, and we lost points in Zandvoort to our championship rivals Alpine.

“We are on a kind of a slow burner, and we are only just getting back into it. We have an upgrade, another one planned hopefully in a couple of races, and let’s hope we can catch Alpine for P8 in the championship. That’s our target and the last couple of races have proved that we can have a fairly good car capable of Q3, so we’ll keep at it.”

While the British-Thai driver qualified in ninth, his rookie team mate Colapinto was knocked out in Q1 after coming close to losing his car by running wide into the gravel. He kept control but had to settle for 18th on the grid.

The Argentinian went on to drive a relatively untroubled race, improving six positions to cross the line in P12 in what was a solid first outing following a whirlwind promotion to F1.

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“It’s not a bad effort for the first race,” Colapinto said. “The car was very strong, and I am very happy of course with the performance we had this weekend. I had a lot of question marks going into the race – I’d never done more than eight laps in a row in an F1 car and today there were 53 to do with very high track temps, the highest of the weekend.

“Of course, a lot of information now to take onto the simulator and to the factory to understand many things better, understanding what to work on. But it was a very positive weekend, I went step by step and we’ve been doing a better show each session.

“Qualifying was always frustrating with that little mistake but I think we worked hard and brought the team back today.”

Looking forward to the next double header, the team will face the unforgiving corners of Baku and intense humidity of Singapore, which will be a particular challenge for Colapinto, who has never raced the circuits.

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“Many things go into a weekend of Formula 1," he explained. "First of all, I couldn’t do a normal preparation because the call was very late. Baku is a track that I don’t know but it’s also a track where I’m going to be able to do a lot more prep and it will help a lot. We need to keep working on that.

“There were things that I was not used to and I’m starting to understand better and adapt as well, so it’s all part of the process. I think the process has to be very quick because it came from one day to another, it was the same week of the race. How we end it is very positive – the team’s happy and I am happy as well with the progression. We are looking forward to the next few rounds.”

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