Albon: Belgium should have been a stronger weekend for us

Alex Albon has been doing a decent job for Williams so far in 2023, making the best out of the team's FW45, a car that is known for its rapidness in a straight line, a trait the team has tried to exploit whenever possible, with Albon scoring points for them in Britain and Canada.

Spa, apart from sector 2 where downforce is required, was supposed to be another track where the FW45's superior top speed should've given Williams a better result, but the team couldn't score any points this time around, both in the Sprint Race and the Grand Prix, as it seems they suffered from excessive tyre degradation.

After finishing 14th in the Grand Prix last Sunday, Albon was asked if he was surprised, he said: "Partly, yeah. Only because I felt like the first part of the stint went so well that I thought the rest of the race was looking good – but it wasn’t to be.

"I just really struggled on the mediums, just degging, huge. We do have great straight-line speed, and that was fun, the racing was fun, I actually enjoyed the racing, but we were so slow in Sector 2 and sliding around so much, so it was a tricky one out there.

"In some respects, I had to drive slowly in Sector 2 to save my tyres, but then I was getting overtaken in Sector 2, so then I was having to push in Sector 2, which was then degrading my tyres even more, and it was just like a downward spiral.

"It is what it is, I had some fun out there, not the result we wanted, but we’ll focus on… Actually, we won’t focus, we’ll take a nice summer break and then refocus," he maintained.

Albon was left worried about Williams' chances at Monza, where their slippery FW45 should run well, the Thai driver concerned the problems that hit them at Spa would return at the Italian venue.

"We do need to review a little bit this weekend because it should have been a stronger weekend for us than it turned out to be. This kind of downforce, what we’re doing here, is going to be similar to Monza," he said.

"We’re not going to have many other tracks now that are going to suit us coming into the end of the year, so we need to make sure that we kind of look at this weekend and then try to learn for Monza and maybe for Suzuka as well," Albon concluded.

Following the Williams' tough weekend in Belgium, Team Principal James Vowles revealed the reason why they suffered from tyre degradation so much they needed three pit stops.

"What caused the degradation issue wasn’t anything that we would have learned in any of the practice sessions – it’s actually a problem that happened in the race," he explained in a Williams video.

"At the end of the race when we took all the wheels off, you have carbons surrounds which different teams call different things – they can be called ‘cake tins’ or ‘nozzles’ – but really they’re trying to control the flow of the very hot brake disc temperature into the tyre. What you want is really to get rid of all that warm air and push out the back of the car.

"But our cake tins were broken – probably during a pit stop, but it’s very difficult to pinpoint exactly where," he pointed out.

"I’m fairly convinced that’s part of the reason why we suddenly had very significant degradation and why the beginning of the race looked almost so different to the end of the race and why we had to go to a three-stop.

"These changes are huge in terms of what it does, not just aerodynamically – clearly, we do a lot of work to make sure the air is going where we want it to go – but also in terms of temperature control of the rear tyres.

"It looked like the first stint was okay," Vowles went on. "The second stint was just about okay. And then we started to get into trouble. And then when the rain came, which cooled everything down, suddenly the car came alive again.

"I think it’s very clear when you work back from it, actually what happened was we were hampered by that – both cars – and it’s quite significant as a contribution to why we suddenly went backwards," Vowles maintained.

Williams are currently seventh in the 2023 F1 Constructors' Championship with 11 points and ahead of Haas, Alfa Romeo and AlphaTauri.