Vowles encourages Albon to continue speaking his mind

Williams F1 principal James Vowles says he wants lead driver Alex Albon to continue speaking out, even when it's critical of the team management.

Albon was unusually opinionated during last week's Miami Grand Prix, questioning messages over the team radio about pushing harder at one point and then being told to prioritise managing tyres at others.

"I'd rather be aggressive and then suffer the consequences later than never try and just finish last," Albon said after the end of the race. "That was why I think I said I don't really agree with it."

• Read also: Albon at odds with Williams, explains testy radio messages

It was unusual for Albon to be so outspoken, as he's known to be one of the most mild-mannered drivers in the paddock - which in itself has earned him criticism for not being sufficiently assertive.

But Vowles was certainly happy with how Albon conducted himself in Miami and hopes for more of the same from his driver in future. "I actually encourage it, I think it's a positive thing," he told Motorsport.com.

"There's going to be no one better who knows what's going on in the car but him," Vowles continued. "I've heard it a few times with him but it's constructive, it's not negative."

Vowles explained that at the time, the team was trying to help ALbon in his battle for track position with Alfa Romeo driver Valtteri Bottas.

"Alex's frustration was normal. He was in a phase where we knew we had an opportunity against Valtteri but only if we could create a tyre offset relative to the two of them.

"More importantly the threat from behind was going to be enormous," he continued. "It was a fine balance. He'll look back on it in hindsight and realise that whatever we did, that's where we were going to end up.

"It was an awful position for the engineer," he explained. "There's no good answer to it: push then and we would have looked even worse; manage more and we would have been where we were.

"That's why I mean Alex can look at it afterwards and say, 'OK I understand why you didn't know which way to go with it.'"

Albon had qualified for the race in 11th place and was hopeful of competing for points, but ended up dropping to 14th during the race meaning that he came away empty handed.

Despite the outcome, Vowles was feeling positive about the most recent race given that there were no retirements or incidents on Sunday to give ALbon an opportunistic lucky break.

"We delivered is where the car was," he insisted. "We took the first stint as long as you possibly can, tried to balance the two stints, but irrespective, there was just a couple of tenths missing.

"We finished ten seconds behind the points, but there was no attrition, nothing went wrong. No VSCs, no safety cars, no yellows, no rain, nothing.

"Ten seconds behind the points for the car that we have, I'm okay with," he declared. "Miami is not a track that I thought would suit us whatsoever at all, and that's how it turned out."

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