Alex Albon just missed out on fighting for points in Baku, finishing in P12 after a VSC denies him a chance of a Top-10 finish.

Formula One returned to the now infamous Baku City Circuit, and it did not take long for the chaos to begin - starting in Qualifying!
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Alex lined up in P17 for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after a red flag triggered a frantic final few minutes of Q1 where heavy traffic thwarted his final laps, resulting in disappointing early exits from Quali as he was denied a chance to improve his laptime.

The Baku City Circuit didn’t provide the chaos that we’ve come to expect at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, but the Williams Racing team leave the Caspian Sea coastline with plenty of encouragement.

Alex made a great start to haul himself into contention, putting himself in the right position to benefit strategically from any early race shenanigans - as he indeed reaped the early rewards to put himself in play for a strong result.

Strategic calls from the pit wall and a faultless drive in the cockpit helped Alex Albon reach P12 by the chequered flag - running in contention for the points, until an ill-timed Virtual Safety Car period denied him a run at the points paying positions.

Even though Alex didn’t quite reach the points, he was in good spirits post-race.

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Alex Albon, Williams Racing Driver #23:

“It was a fun race here in Baku! We just got a bit unlucky with the VSC timing, otherwise we would have been in a better place to fight for points today, but again our race pace was actually really strong.

“If you look at our pace relative to the midfield it was very strong; we were as quick if not quicker than a lot of cars in front of us. We had a good start, optimised what we had, and it was a well-executed race for us.”

The next race on the 2022 Formula One calendar is the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, which takes place next week on the 17-19 June.