Alex Albon has opened up on the heated radio exchange he had with his Williams race engineer during the Hungarian Grand Prix, when he called out his team for being "indecisive."
After a promising start from P13 that saw Albon clock in ninth at the end of the first lap, the Williams charger found himself stuck behind the Aston Martins of Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso.
Eventually, in a bid to help Albon’s race, which he had started on the soft tyre, Williams’ strategists switched their approach from a two-stopper to a three-stop race, before reverting to the former.
“So Alex, we’re now thinking you’re going to have to go to plan B,” Albon was told by his race engineer. But the suggestion that did not go down well with the Anglo-Thai racer who had been pushing his tyres on the assumption that he would be stopping three times.
“Yeah, but I don’t appreciate when you do that, and now my tyres are dead. We’re just too indecisive!”
After the race, which he finished well outside the points in 14th position, Albon shed light on how events had unfolded and on his testy radio message.
“I think this is the only thing that must have gone on TV! Everyone’s been asking the same question! It wasn’t that bad, was it?” he joked.
“It was only because we had a great start, and I thought, ‘Okay, perfect, we’re in a fight for points.’ We had very good pace in the first stint as well,” he explained.
“We tried to undercut Fernando but we couldn’t, we didn’t, and I think that was the deciding factor, because if we got past Fernando we would’ve not been held back by Fernando.
“Fernando was playing a good team game, he bunched up the whole group to allow Lance to pit and extend his stint.
“And then we went from a two-stop to a three-stop, and then in the middle of that strategy call we went back to a two-stop, so I kind of used up all my tyres ready for the three-stop, ready to be boxed, and then I just got left out.
“Obviously they know better than me, but just in terms of the tyres, they took a punishing for no reason, basically.”
Asked if there was nevertheless positives to take away from his Hungarian weekend, Albon said: “Yeah, there is. There’s a definite positive trend if you look at Barcelona to here, tracks that are quite similar, and we’ve done really well, considering.
“So, it’s relative, but I’m happy.”
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