Albon admits ‘nothing’s been working’ for Williams in Hungary after disappointing Q1 exit

Alex Albon believes Williams were “way too slow” in Qualifying at the Hungaroring, leaving him with an uphill battle after he bagged his worst starting position since 2022.

The 29-year-old was eliminated in Q1 and will start the Grand Prix from P20 just behind Kick Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg, whose effort was 0.142s clear of Albon as the latter suffered from uncharacteristically poor one-lap pace.

After a remarkably strong weekend last time out in Belgium that saw him claim P5 in Qualifying, the Williams driver has struggled to match the performance of other midfield teams in Hungary, failing to break into the top-10 throughout practice.

But after their first flying laps, Albon and his team mate Carlos Sainz were up in P15 and P16 before they both bolted on a fresh set of soft tyres. While the Spaniard improved to P8, Albon could only manage 17th before he was bumped down to last place by Pierre Gasly, Esteban Ocon and Hulkenberg.

Reflecting on what went wrong after the session, he said: “I think mainly we just didn’t account for the cooler track temperatures. We got a little bit slow on the out lap – way too slow, really.

“I went into Turn 1 and the tyres were too cold and then it just spiralled. Not ideal but it can happen, and let’s see. Hopefully tomorrow we can do something.

“It is tricky to drive, but it’s not P20 tricky. It’s been one of those weekends so far where we’ve just been throwing stuff at it and nothing’s really been working.

“We went back to the FP1 car for Qualifying just to try to get back somewhere where I was happiest, which was in FP1. I don't know, maybe the track’s moved on since then.”

Sainz similarly confirmed that they took a step back in terms of the set-up on his car, but he was ultimately able to progress to Q2 and secure P13 on the grid, which nevertheless marked his third consecutive Q2 elimination.

“I think we ended up reverting back on a lot of the set-up items we tried during the week,” he said. “We went back to a car I know and I more or less did the maximum that was available to us today with P13.

“It's been a very difficult track for the Williams so far, but we knew that coming into here and we just need to maximise whatever we have.

“I think we’re going to try our best to get a point or two but realistically speaking, we don’t have the pace to do so.”