{"id":312449,"date":"2025-08-02T17:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312449\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T17:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:25:11","slug":"alex-albon-admits-nothings-been-working-for-williams-in-hungary-after-disappointing-q1-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312449\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Albon admits \u2018nothing\u2019s been working\u2019 for Williams in Hungary after disappointing Q1 exit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">Alex Albon believes Williams were \u201cway too slow\u201d in Qualifying at the Hungaroring, leaving him with an uphill battle after he bagged his worst starting position since 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">The 29-year-old was eliminated in Q1 and will start the Grand Prix from P20 just behind Kick Sauber\u2019s Nico Hulkenberg, whose effort was 0.142s clear of Albon as the latter suffered from uncharacteristically poor one-lap pace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">After a remarkably strong weekend <a class=\"text-brand-hot-red underline decoration-1 hover:decoration-[3px]\" href=\"https:\/\/www.formula1.com\/en\/latest\/article\/albon-happy-with-p6-in-belgium-after-holding-off-hamilton-but-sainz-not.6z1kNK5iVa3dsHwT8y6oLx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">last time out in Belgium<\/a> that saw him claim P5 in Qualifying, the Williams driver has struggled to match the performance of other midfield teams in Hungary, failing to break into the top-10 throughout practice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">But after their first flying laps, Albon and his team mate Carlos Sainz were up in P15 and P16 before they both bolted on a fresh set of soft tyres. While the Spaniard improved to P8, Albon could only manage 17th before he was bumped down to last place by Pierre Gasly, Esteban Ocon and Hulkenberg.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">Reflecting on what went wrong after the session, he said: \u201cI think mainly we just didn\u2019t account for the cooler track temperatures. We got a little bit slow on the out lap \u2013 way too slow, really.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cI went into Turn 1 and the tyres were too cold and then it just spiralled. Not ideal but it can happen, and let\u2019s see. Hopefully tomorrow we can do something.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cIt is tricky to drive, but it\u2019s not P20 tricky. It\u2019s been one of those weekends so far where we\u2019ve just been throwing stuff at it and nothing\u2019s really been working.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cWe went back to the <a class=\"text-brand-hot-red underline decoration-1 hover:decoration-[3px]\" href=\"https:\/\/www.formula1.com\/en\/latest\/article\/fp1-norris-leads-piastri-and-leclerc-during-first-practice-in-hungary.5E8ae1H3BdIrasCY6uMou0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FP1<\/a> car for Qualifying just to try to get back somewhere where I was happiest, which was in FP1. I don&#8217;t know, maybe the track\u2019s moved on since then.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">Sainz similarly confirmed that they took a step back in terms of the set-up on his car, but he was ultimately able to progress to Q2 and secure P13 on the grid, which nevertheless marked his third consecutive Q2 elimination.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cI think we ended up reverting back on a lot of the set-up items we tried during the week,\u201d he said. \u201cWe went back to a car I know and I more or less did the maximum that was available to us today with P13.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cIt&#8217;s been a very difficult track for the Williams so far, but we knew that coming into here and we just need to maximise whatever we have.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cI think we\u2019re going to try our best to get a point or two but realistically speaking, we don\u2019t have the pace to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Albon believes Williams were \u201cway too slow\u201d in Qualifying at the Hungaroring, leaving him with an uphill&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-312449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114960343043528532","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}