Formula 1

Albon continues to impress for Williams Racing after assured drive at Imola

Fraser Masefield
25 Apr 2022
3 min read

Fresh from his first points scoring outing for the Williams Racing F1 team, partnered by Acronis, Alexander Albon continued his impressive form at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at the iconic Imola circuit.

With Saturday’s qualifying disrupted by rain and catching many teams out, the Anglo-Thai driver was left with an uphill battle, starting P18 on the grid after the Sprint race format.

Yet with his now growing reputation for superb tyre management and race craft, the man affectionately dubbed ‘Albono’ scythed his way through the field on a one-stop race strategy, enjoying a race long battle with Pierre Gasly and overtaking seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.

Despite making up a remarkable seven places from his starting position, Albon finished one position agonisingly shy of another points position by the chequered flag.

“I’m really happy with the result today,” commented Albon in his team’s post-race press release. “We maximised the opportunities and overtook some cars on track with the pace we had. We had a new rear wing configuration for the weekend which really helped us hold position, and was particularly important in the second half of the race when battling with Gasly.

“It’s a shame that we missed out on points by one place, but we are taking opportunities, doing things differently and showing that we can battle higher up despite not having the fastest car. I was hoping DRS would be enabled a little earlier; we had six or seven laps where we were faster than the cars ahead and, with our downforce levels, we could have got past straightaway if we’d had DRS. By the time it was enabled I was wishing it hadn’t been! Overall, another weekend with plenty of positives for the team to take onwards to Miami.”

With Williams teammate Nicholas Latifi also improving on his starting position by race end, there was plenty for Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance, to be highly encouraged about at the end of the weekend.

“Today’s mixed conditions made for some difficult decisions, but we took our opportunities well and can be pleased with the result,” added Robson. “Alex drove really well, spending his entire stint on the Medium tyres both in the dirty air from Ocon and with Gasly constantly applying pressure behind.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t get a few more places when we first switched to the Medium tyre as the car was working really well at that point. However, it was a good recovery from a difficult weekend. Nicholas showed some excellent pace on the Medium compound and drove a strong and well controlled race.”

TEAM UP WITH ACRONIS

Prominent once again on the nose of the car and on the front wing endplates are the team’s official cyber protection partner Acronis. Williams Racing uses Acronis technology to add extra layers of protection to its IT infrastructure, protecting hundreds of servers and endpoint devices.

During the 2021 season, Acronis opened up an exciting #TeamUp Program, giving new and existing service providers the opportunity to support sports partnerships, join the sports ecosystem, attend races and enjoy amazing sports marketing benefits. To find out more, please visit https://www.acronis.com/en-us/lp/msp-sports/

Fraser Masefield

Sports news and features writer, web editor and author.

View all posts

You may also like