Alex Albon had a massive shunt during the FP1 of the Australian Grand Prix. This destroyed his car to a great extent and made his FW46 useless for the rest of the weekend. Therefore, Williams decided to withdraw Logan Sargeant from the 2024 Australian Grand Prix after allowing his teammate Albon to use his car for the remainder of the GP. Amid this, Albon revealed that he would not let Sargeant‘s sacrifice go in vain and vowed a payback.
According to Albon, the perfect way to pay Sargeant back would be to score some points at Albert Park. Notably, this is the sole reason why James Vowles took the bold decision to drop the American for the Thai driver. To add to this, Albon claimed 27 out of a total of 28 points and single-handedly helped his team finish in P7 in the Constructors’ Championship last year.
Speaking about the payback, Albon said in a report published by Autosport, “The only thing you can really do is focus on your job and put it all behind you and treat the weekend like the normal weekend… I think so far, we’ve done a good job, just to keep it going. And the ultimate kind of payback to Logan would be some points.”
The former Red Bull driver started qualifying on a decent note. He took P7 in Q1, and finally P12 in Q2. As he got eliminated from Q2, he was two-tenths slower than Mercedes’ George Russell. Therefore, Albon will start the race on Sunday from P12, behind Lewis Hamilton in P11 and ahead of his former teammate Valtteri Bottas in P13.
Interestingly, the point-scoring window is very tight at the Albert Park circuit. The top ten places are already taken by drivers of the top 5 teams except Yuki Tsunoda. Therefore, Albon has chances to claim points if Tsunoda and either of the Aston Martin drivers drops back or any driver from P1 to P11 has a DNF.
Can Alex Albon pay Williams back with points for Logan Sargeant’s sacrifice?
The Australian Grand Prix race on Sunday is going to be a different one for Alex Albon. The Thai-British driver would be under immense pressure to deliver and be the only Williams driver on the track to have all eyes on him.
The FP1 crash on Friday must have drained his confidence to quite an extent, and on top of that he would have to meet the expectations set by Vowles, and the entire team to come home with points. Therefore, Albon needs to bring out his best performance if he wants to give a payback.
While Albon’s charge for points on Sunday will not be a surprise, he needs to be cautious, nonetheless. He has to compete with Hamilton and the former has been unlucky on more than one occasion [Brazil 2019, Austria 2020] while he was having the wheel-to-wheel tussle against the latter.
All in all, Alex Albon with all his experiences from Toro Rosso, Red Bull, and Williams can hope to pull it off, finish the race in points, and have the payback to his teammate Logan Sargeant for his unreal sacrifice.
