Upgraded Williams faster but trickier to drive as Alex Albon qualifies fifth at Spa

Alex Albon said the upgraded Williams Formula 1 car is faster but trickier to drive as he qualified a season-best fifth for the Belgian Grand Prix on Saturday.

The Grove-based team brought a fairly sizable update to Spa this weekend, with changes focusing on the floor, sidepods and engine cover.

Carlos Sainz had already shown the potential of the new package by finishing sixth in the sprint race, but Albon went one better in qualifying, beating the likes of George Russell and Yuki Tsunoda to take fifth on the grid.

Asked if he agreed with Sainz’s assessment that the FW47 was now faster but harder to drive, Albon said: “Yeah, I would say so. 

“We obviously haven't done enough yet to really set up the car into a perfect place. A lot of that will come back to us just with set-up changes. Being a sprint race weekend, we haven't really been able to do much. 

“We've got more downforce. We need to see because it hasn't been the easiest weekend so far just to get the laps together.”

After Albon finished outside of the points in 16th place in the sprint, Williams took the decision to take some downforce off the car to boost its straightline speed.

The Anglo-Thai driver believes this was the key to his improved pace in qualifying, with Williams emerging as the fourth-quickest team behind McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull.

“We were quite draggy in the sprint race, so we decided to drop something out of the car just to be in line with all the other people,” he explained.

“I felt like in the sprint race, I was quick but we couldn't do anything behind the other cars.

“So it meant going into qualifying everything was a little bit trickier because you're obviously sliding around a little bit more.

“We fixed the deployment, which was the biggest difference from Friday to today.

“But then, I would say [in terms of] pure pace, I felt less competitive during qualifying than I was at any point before the qualifying sessions. It felt tricky. 

“I was P10 in Q2 and I didn't feel that happy. I didn't really know where that lap time I could get or where I could get more positions. And then Q3 opened and I found a chunk of time so I put it down to tyres as it always is. We found the sweet spot today.”

The pre-qualifying changes also contributed to the FW47 becoming harder to drive, but Albon said he was able to put together a clean lap in Q3 to book a spot on the third row of the grid.

“I felt like when we took off the downforce we made the car much harder to drive and the tyres weren't lasting the whole lap.

“So it was becoming harder and harder to go quicker in sector 1 and sector 2 and then you go slower again. You never felt like you could get all the lap in one place.

“And then in Q3 I did. I got it all in one, so I was really happy.”