Alex Albon was ‘holding on for dear life’ to claim Belgian GP points finish

亚历克斯·埃尔well-earned World Championship point at Spa, but acknowledged it had been a tall order to keep several cars behind him.

The Williams driver had already made it through to Q3 for the first time this season in qualifying, and grid penalties promoted him to the third row of the grid for the start of the Belgian Grand Prix.

He produced a dogged performance to keep hold of a place in the top 10, despite being at the head of a ‘DRS train’ that could have seen him swallowed up by cars behind.

Albon was able to stay ahead of those behind in part thanks to Williams’ impressive top speed credentials and while he said it is one of the key strengths of his FW44, it also counts against him in other areas of the circuit.

Despite losing places at the start, he was “really happy” to get over the finish line to score his fourth point of the season – particularly with how hard he had to fight to keep hold of his position.

“Yeah, very happy,” Albon said in the paddock after the race. “We didn’t get the greatest start and then after that, I could tell very quickly it would be a tough one.

“I was asking when we need to pit because we were struggling out there. What’s our advantage is also sometimes our weakness – we are good on the straights but that means we slide around a bit more in the corners, and that doesn’t help tyre degradation.

“[At] some tracks, we are good at tyre deg and we are fast, but with a track temp like this today it just made it very difficult and we got through it.

“We were on the final set of tyres running P10 and it was just holding on for dear life – I was very happy to see that chequered flag at the end.

“It was a really good result and I feel like all weekend we’ve done a really good job. I’m really happy with how this weekend’s gone, so positive vibes into Zandvoort.”

P10 babypic.twitter.com/kwFckmgzT0

— Alex Albon (@alex_albon)August 28, 2022

Albon and Williams remain bottom of theConstructors’ Championship, with his team-mate Nicholas Latifi yet to get off the mark for the season.

Albon’s former Red Bull team-mateMax Verstappen went on to take a dominant victoryaround Spa-Francorchamps having made his way up from 14th on the grid to earn a comfortable win, extending his World Championship lead to 93 points.