Alex Albon says his Belgian Grand Prix started on a strong note but ended in a “vicious circle” due to the excessive tyre degradation of his low-downforce Williams.
Albon was a man on the move in the early stages of the race at Spa, the Anglo-Thai racer rocketing from P15 on the grid to P10 on the opening, and then exploiting the full might of his Williams’ top speed to dispatch his rivals on the Kemmel straight to progress to sixth by lap six!
A switch from Softs to Mediums on lap seven set the Williams charger down the order from where he recovered to slot himself once again among the top ten.
A second set of Mediums bolted on thirteen laps later upheld his hopes of concluding his afternoon in the points. But that prospect was thwarted as tyre deg came into play.
And a third pit stop nine laps from the end of the race to swap his used rubber for a fresh set of Softs did nothing to improve his fortunes which ended with a lowly P14 at the checkered flag.
“I was almost surprised that I fell out of the points in the mid-stint, and don't know where everyone leapfrogged me," Albon admitted.
"At the end of the stint, we were struggling with tyre degradation and it was a tricky race because we are running the low downforce.
"That is great fun in some ways, but through Sector 2, it is not so fun anymore. We are just degrading the tyres so much, and we even saw it on the Wet tyres.
"It was a bit of a wake-up call just how much degradation we had in the race, particularly on the Medium tyre.”
Albon admitted that there was little he could do to alleviate the issue without completely surrendering to his opponents. But finding the right pace/degradation compromise locked him in a “vicious circle”.
"The other issue that I had was to race the cars around me, I was basically having to push in Sector 2 because as soon as I backed off and tried to manage the tyres in the places you need to like Turn 10 to Turn 12, I was immediately under fire and almost got overtaken by the car behind.
"I had to over-push the tyre and then it is a vicious cycle because you then degrade more and you are already trying to save the tyre but you are not allowed to and don't have the freedom.
"It is not like Canada, Austria or Silverstone where I felt like I could manage the tyres in a couple of corners. Here they were up my gearbox the whole time so I had to keep pushing."
Albon said that he’ll be pressing Williams for answers on his excessive tyre degradation troubles, as the FW43's low downforce configuration will also be relied upon by the Grove-based at Monza next month.
“It is a frustrating one because it was a weekend where we thought we would do better,” he said.
“We need to make sure we understand why we struggled so much. At the end of the day, this downforce [package] will be similar to Monza.
“That is going to be our next best chance to score points so we need to learn from this weekend, so when we come back to tracks that suit us, we don't have this happen again.”
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