Vowles hails extraordinary 'drive of champions' from Albon

Williams team principal James Vowles could speak any higher about Alex Albon's spectacular drive to seventh place in last weekend's Canadian Grand Prix.

Albon had been handed the team's latest technical upgrade packages for the event, and also had a brand new power unit to make the most of a circuit that the team felt would suit the FW45.

“I highlighted a few of the races this year and this was one of them, where you have to throw everything at it," Vowles revealed. "And then deliver what we can out of the car."

• Read also: Albon pays tribute to Williams for fast-tracking upgrades

But even with the help of some inclement weather conditions during Friday and Saturday, no one was expecting quite the level of success that Albon delivered at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve.

Albon not only survived the first cut in qualifying but finished Q2 fastest of anyone, 0.367s quicker than Red Bull's Max Verstappen. A red flag prevented him from setting a time in the final round but he still started Sunday's race from P9.

Initially it looked like the Williams' qualifying pace had flattered to deceive as he lost a spot on the first lap making an early pit stop under a safety car on lap 12

That was earlier than the team had been planning, leaving them asking Albon to run the remaining 59 laps without a further stop.

"That safety car obviously changed things quite significantly and it made it very difficult for a number of competitors, but also created that opportunity to us," Vowles explained in Williams' latest The Vowles Verdict video.

"We knew the life would just about be possible on that hard tyre from then onwards," he continued. "What we did is from that point onwards [was to stay] open-minded to converting to a two[-stopper].

"But the situation never really appeared for us to do so," he continued. "Had there been another Safety Car or VSC you would have seen us stop again, for example.

"That's another circumstance we would have converted - that one-stop would have been very difficult then," he admitted. "As it turns out we were on the right strategy, and Alex did really a tremendous job."

It was even more impressive given that the team was suffering from a sensor issue on Sunday leaving them essentially running blind when it came to tyre management.

"There was an issue which didn't affect reliability but definitely affected performance and data" he told the Italian edition of Motorsport.com.

"We have sensors pointing at the rear tyres which tell what's happening," he explained. "They basically tell us what the temperature of the rear tyres is.

"They're very, very useful for understanding what we're doing with the tyres in the race," he said, before revealing the sensors had malfunctioned. "It still had the internal temperature of the tyres, but the external one was missing.

"We tried to solve the problem on the grid in the short period of time available, unfortunately without success," he added. "[So Alex], like us, was blind to tyre temperatures."

Vowles praised the way that Albon changed the racing line on key corners and made sure that he braked perfectly to maximise the life of his tyres to last him to the finish despite intense pressure from Esteban Ocon.

"The way I described it to him was really, a drive of champions," he said. "When you have a stack of cars behind you that are clearly much quicker, with your tyres going away from you, is an extraordinary drive. He did incredibly well."

The result handed Williams six points to add to the one they had clinched in the season opener at Bahrain, again courtesy of a great drive from Albon. It moves Williams out of the wooden spoon position and into ninth ahead of AlphaTauri.

Williams are now just one point away from catching Haas, and then one more away from equalling Alfa Romeo. Given the improvement in the car's form in Canada, it's not difficult to imagine the team up to seventh by the summer break.

But Vowles warned that just as Montreal had been a circuit suited to the Williams, there were races coming up where they knew they would be up against it.

"There are going be tracks, we know this – and I’ll tell you already Budapest, unless it’s wet – where we’re going to struggle."

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