Albon rues 'luxurious' Williams performance for being 'too quick'

Alex Albon labelled Williams' performance in Azerbaijan as "luxurious" as he also rued the performance as being "too quick."

Albon scored the equal-best result of his Williams career with a seventh in Baku as new team-mate Franco Colapinto scored a further four points in eighth place for Williams best two-car result since a five-eight at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix. 

The haul of 10 points moved the team ahead of Alpine into eighth in the constructors' as Albon doubled his haul of points for the entire 2024 season in one race, with 12 now on the board.

Following on from his points at Monza, it is the first time Williams has scored points in back-to-back races since the United States-Mexico City in 2023, as he heaped praise on the team for the result.

"I think we are in front of Alpine now, which was the target for the end of the year," Albon told media including RacingNews365. 

"We have [spoken] about how difficult it is to get P9 and P10, but to get P7 and P8 is luxurious - and we will take it. 

"It shows that we've made good progress, and for the upgrade, it is another points finish and it was another weekend where we were positively quick - and similar to the Aston Martin."

However, Albon added that he felt the team was actually too fast in Baku with the unexpected pace proving a problem as the leaders pitted and emerged behind the Thai driver.

"We did a different strategy to pretty much the majority of the grid - and I don't think it was great in the end - and the reason was the amount of time we lost in the midfield fight when I was overtaken by everyone," he said.

"It was six or seven seconds of race time lost that would have quite easily put us ahead of Fernando [Alonso in sixth], but I think we were almost too quick. 

"We thought they were going to come out in front of us, but they actually came out behind me, so it was great in some ways."