Albon not himself to blame for his crash in Australia after all

Alexander Albon could do nothing about his crash in Australia. So states team boss James Vowles in a new video from Williams. A change in energy supply would have been the culprit.

Not Albon's fault after all

For Albon, the Australian Grand Prix soon came to an end. The Thai raced in the top ten after a great qualifying session, but things went wrong on lap seven. The Williams driver lost control of his FW45 at turn six and flew into the wall. Afterwards, Albon took the blame, but it now appears he couldn't do anything about it himself.

In a video in which Vowles looks back on the past race weekend, Albon's moment also comes up for discussion. According to the Williams team boss, there was nothing Albon could have done. ''Turn five is full throttle in qualifying, but in the race it is difficult. We therefore assumed he would have to lift. However, the car worked better than expected and he could just about get through that corner at full throttle.''

Vowles explains

The fact that Albon could still go through that corner full throttle affected the power systems. These are preset to determine where in the lap energy is used and where it is saved. This was adjusted during the race because Albon could still go through that corner full throttle, but that's where things went wrong.

''As a result, Alex was going ten kilometres per hour faster through turn five than the lap before. Alex noticed he was going too fast and had to lift. As a result, he ran wide, causing his left rear tyre to hit the kerb. None of this seems like a big deal, but when the tyres are on the limit it has big consequences. Once he turned in for turn six, he noticed that he didn't have the grip from the laps before.''

So it turned out to be an accumulation of events, so the ultimate consequence was that Albon had no grip on turning six. So no fault of the Thai, but an unfortunate confluence of circumstances that the Grove-based team will have to look at.