Alex Albon's seventh-place finish in the Italian Grand Prix equaled his previous best result scored with Williams in Montreal in June, but team boss James Vowles says his driver's performance at Monza was one notch above.
In the final five laps of last Sunday's race, after a solid drive and a trouble-free strategy execution by his Williams' crews, Albon found himself in seventh place hounded by McLaren's Lando Norris.
But Albon made the most his FW-45's straight-line speed to fend off the Briton while never putting a foot wrong to cross the checkered flag with just a 0.132s margin over the McLaren charger.
During his cool-down lap, the Anglo-Thai racer was praised over the radio by Vowles and race engineer James Urwin who told Albon that it had been his best drive ever with the British outfit.
Read also:
As a defensive tool, the maximum velocity of Williams' FW45 had come in handy for Albon in Montreal and also at Monza. Yet Vowles considered that remaining ahead of Norris last weekend at the Temple of Speed was quite a feat given the slipstreaming opportunities typically offered by the venue.
"I think in Montreal there is actually really only one overtaking point," Vowles explained, speaking to Motorsport.com. "And if you get your exit right there, and do the right things, you can stop it.
"In Monza, there are the three or four areas where you can quite easily lose position. And in fact, you did see Alex lose position but, when he did, he positioned himself straight away for the repass.
©Williams
"So he was very much in control of what he was doing in that race, and the result was very much the reward of seventh place. It would have been easy to lose one, and then those three positions, and he never did.
"Again, if we go back to Montreal, we were fortunate in some regards, it was Esteban [Ocon] behind with the 'wobbly' rear wing.
"Here, you had Lando who was at some points three tenths behind on the run down to Turn 1. And yet Alex finished in front."
The Williams car’s ‘slippery’ characteristics offered the team the prospect of a nice bag of points at Monza. But in the end, Vowles reckoned that P7 was a best-case scenario for the Grobe-based squad.
"I think the reward of seventh is where that car could be in the best of scenarios,” he said.
"And as you saw, in fact, I'd even argue the race car was slightly off that, but we've walked away quite happily with as good a result as we could have achieved."
©Williams
Last weekend’s performance, coupled with Albon’s unexpected P8 at Zandvoort a week earlier, has allowed Williams to solidify its seventh-place position in F1’s Constructors’ Championship.
With 21 points on the board and eight rounds to go, Vowles says that his first campaign at the helm of Williams is turning out much better than expected.
"Yeah, definitely," he said. "It would have been churlish to throw away the fact that we have been on a few points at the back end of the championship for many years. And to be where we are now I think is a dream."
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
