Williams 'hounded' FIA over mistake that prompted rare apology

Alex Albon has explained how his Williams team 'hounded' the FIA over an incident during the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend that prompted a rare apology. 

In qualifying, Albon was eliminated in 16th place as Stake's Nico Hulkenberg advanced through to Q2. The German had breached track limits at Turn 11, although his time was not immediately deleted.

This deletion would have seen Albon through to Q2, with the violation from Hulkenberg not acted upon until the start of Q3, when he was demoted to 16th. This, though, was too late for Albon to participate in Q2, leaving the Thai-British driver starting 15th. 

In a statement, the FIA explained that certain "track limit hot-spots are given precedence" for monitoring, with Turn 4 having particular focus, but that with "hindsight [Turn 11] should have been higher on our priority list".

Due to the time taken to work through the higher-priority corners, Hulkenberg's violation was not noticed until later. The FIA conceded that "on this occasion, we got it wrong".

When asked for his reflections, Albon, who finished 12th in the grand prix for his first point-less race of the season, explained how Williams immediately pressurised the FIA. 

"We were on it, we fed that immediately to the FIA, we were hounding them, but they didn't see it in time," Albon explained when asked by RacingNews365 for an account of what happened. 

"So yeah, lesson learnt, and we'll try something else. 

"I mean, maybe they have a lot going on, but it is not a track like the Red Bull Ring where you are getting pings left, right, and centre.

"It should be a bit easier to follow but maybe they got their hands tied up, it happened in Hungary a couple of years ago I think, but the weekend was 'shoulda, woulda, coulda."

As for his race, Albon felt the FW47 was the second-quickest car of the midfield, only behind Pierre Gasly's Alpine, who finished in seventh, scoring six points.

"The race pace on Friday was really strong, you didn't really see it, but [in the race], the pace was really strong," he added.

"We were fighting through cars all race, and to me, we were the second-fastest midfield car behind Pierre, so to come away with P12 is a bit frustrating."

Hulkenberg finished 13th at the chequered flag but was disqualified for excessive plank-wear, the fourth disqualification across the grid in just four races.