亚历克斯·埃尔敦促Williams to ‘go back to the drawing board’
Alex Albon finished seventh in practice but is concerned about their race pace.
Alex Albon has suggested Williams goes “back to the drawing board” after struggling with his setup during free practice.
The Thai-British driver finished P7 in the second practice session of the weekend, once again showing good pace down the straight.
But while they may look good over one lap, Albon has concerns with their race pace and has suggested a compromise needs to be made.
Alex Albon suggests sacrificing qualifying pace for race pace
Albon is looking to return to Q3 after missing out in Singapore but while that could be possible this weekend, Albon has warned about leaving themselves vulnerable to a worse race car.
Speaking after his FP2 runout, Albon suggested the team should look into compromising their qualifying pace if it means a quick race car.
“It was okay,” Albon said of his running. “The low fuel pace feels good. We kind of expected that.
“I think it’s the long run pace that we are struggling with so we need to figure that out. I think the deg is high. This track temp and humidity, a little bit like Singapore. We are struggling in the race runs so let’s go back to the drawing board a bit.
“I think we might need to compromise our quali tyre a little bit for our race car.”
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As we have come to expect from the FW45, it is one of the quickest cars down the straight and Albon has said Suzuka is no different.
“Still on the straights,” he said with a smile when asked where their pace was. “We’re good on the straights, giving up a little bit in sector one and sliding around a little bit more.
“It’s why in the short runs we kind of get away with it because we are able to cool the tyres down a bit more on the out laps and all that kind of thing. So I guess we need to try to revisit it a little bit.”
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