Albon coy as Williams impresses in Mexico

Alex Albon believes it is "all to play for" in Mexico City Grand Prix after strong efforts heading into qualifying throughout practice.

Albon ended third practice just 0.070s down on Max Verstappen, backing up the rapid pace he showed on Friday to lead to suggestions he could be in with a shot of a front-row result.

The Williams package has been best on low downforce circuits this season, with the altitude in Mexico meaning Monaco-spec wings only produce Monza-levels of downforce.

Albon's best result in qualifying this season was fourth in the Netherlands, backing it up with sixth at Monza, with a strong chance of eclipsing that at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Albon's standout Mexican performances

"Last year wasn't that good for us: low-speed corners don’t tend to do well for us, and this is predominantly a third-gear circuit, so let's see how it goes," Albon explained to media including RacingNews365 before the on-track action started.

"We've seen our car can [perform] unexpectedly at times and I wouldn't want to say that we can score points this weekend but I think we can be close, and hopefully rely on some drivers and teams not optimising their packages, and then we can take over.

"So, it is all to play for.

"We scored points in Qatar in the Sprint race, so for us, we've been on what we call a bit of a run – two races in a row – (after a double points finish in the final classification in the United States).

"Obviously we haven't had many upgrades for a while now. In the midfield, because it's so tight, it's more about execution than anything else and we seem to have a decent car."

Albon's performances also caught the eye of Mercedes boss Toto Wolff - detailing that the FW45 has "been strong in every session so far and looked good in the long run having been working really well," throughout practice, when speaking to Sky Germany.