Alex Albon is on a mission to deliver points to Williams in Sunday's Australian GP, calling it the “ultimate kind of payback" to his teammate Logan Sargeant.
Albon's weekend started off on a rough note, with a heavy crash during Friday's opening practice session that left his car irreparable, forcing him to sit out FP2.
Adding insult to injury, Williams was without a spare chassis in Australia, leaving team boss James Vowles to make the difficult call to pull Sargeant out of his race weekend and assign his car to Albon to maximise the Grove-based outfit’s chance for points.
Despite the unusual circumstances and inevitable pressure, the Anglo-Thai racer put in a solid qualifying performance, navigating his way into Q2 and claiming a P12 spot on Sunday’s grid, a position that sets the stage for a potential points finish on Sunday.
After qualifying, Albon opened up on his mindset since yesterday and taking over Sargeant’s FW46.
"A different feeling, a weird feeling, if I'm honest," he said, quoted by Motorsport.com.
"Because it's one thing kind of making a mistake and then having pressure trying to deliver a performance in qualifying, but it's another feeling when you're obviously being given a responsibility - and I take that responsibility, it's not lost on me.
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"So yeah, it was tough. At the same time, the only thing you can really do is focus on your job and put it all behind you and treat the weekend like the normal weekend.
"Obviously, a session down. But genuinely, that's all I can really do. And I think so far, we've done a good job. Just to keep it going. And the ultimate kind of payback to Logan would be some points."
Albon lauded Sargeant's team spirit for prioritizing the team's success by accepting the decision to hand over his car.
"We chat, we always chat," he said. "We're very open as a team. I was helping him in FP2. And then when this decision was made, he was helping me. He's been a true gentleman. He's been a true team player in this whole situation.
"And we were talking about FP2, the things that he liked and didn't like with a car, we have similar feedback. So you can kind of trust him straight away on it, and start FP3 kind of where he left off."
Albon said that he didn’t note any significant differences between Sargeant’s chassis and his own mount, adding that he felt that he had given it his all in qualifying, with P12 likely the maximum he could have achieved.
"Half a tenth here, maybe,” he said. “I found that Q1 lap was very strong. I find that I've had this a few times at Williams, where especially when the tyres are very soft, it's very hard for me to go much quicker.
"If I go quicker through a corner, I tend to overheat the tyres. So you kind of always going at the same speed, and it's quite tricky after a good run to improve much more on it.
"But considering everything that's happened over the last few days, it's been a good result."
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