Alex Albon explains Monaco F1 radio outburst: "Were we too clever?"

Alex Albon admits worried his Williams Formula 1 team was being “too clever” with its Monaco Grand Prix tactics, following an outburst over the radio.

In the 2025 race, Alex Albon and team-mate Carlos Sainz qualified 10th and 11th, and they worked together to keep rivals behind and create a gap in which to pit.

They both successfully made the points in ninth and 10th.

This year they again qualified together in 11th and 12th, opening up the possibility for a repeat.

Sainz duly held up the pack to give Albon space to pit, before the latter returned the favour.

However, at times during the race Albon questioned the strategy, and he was particularly frustrated when Arvid Lindblad snuck past.

In the end the high attrition rate and a raft of penalties allowed Albon to claim eighth, although Sainz lost a potential points finish after being hit first by Nico Hulkenberg and then by Franco Colapinto after the second start.

“I understand how this works,” said Albon when asked by Crash.net about the tactics.

“More just I felt very vulnerable out there.

“I had a deployment issue the whole race, and we were losing four/five tenths down the straights, and then on top we were trying to do the same game as last year.

“But if anything, I was frustrated more because I felt like I let the team down; I lost position to Arvid into Turn 1, partly down to my deployment issue, and I thought by us trying to be smart we've actually now got both cars out the points.

“At the time I didn't know where the situation of who was having DNFs, and whatnot.

“So, for me, it was [a question of] were we too clever at that at that time in the race? In the end, it worked out.

“I think if, if the red flag didn't happen, Arvid obviously wouldn't finish in front of us.

“So, in many ways, yeah, we were okay. But at the time I thought there's no way I'm going to be able to hold all these cars behind me.”

He added: “It was all going to plan. And then the DNFs just made more things in the window, basically, more opportunities to play this team game and get both guys in the points, so we shifted very well.

“Just we were compromised because of the issue on my car."

Albon acknowledged that just being in the position to fight for points after the difficult start to the season was a positive.

“Yeah, there's definitely progress,” he said.

“I was going to say this weekend we were deployment issue-free, but we were not, so we're still going after some gremlins.

“But it must be the most normal weekend, feels a good rhythm throughout the weekend.

“To be honest with you, I’m still not comfortable with the car, but getting to grips with it.”

However, he acknowledged that Barcelona could be tricky for the team, with the car’s excess weight not helping.

“Yep, we've seen this weekend as well that we are quite slow in the medium speed, so Turn 1, Turn 3, Turn 4, Turn 12, we've been quite a lot slower than the midfield teams.

“That's partly weight, but that's also maybe just balance, downforce as well.

“We seem to be going quite well in the low-speed, that was Miami, Montreal, and Monaco.

“So I think our hot streak is maybe going to be on hold for a little bit, and we'll have to wait.”