In Las Vegas, both Williams drivers reached the final qualifying, which has not happened for a long time since 2016: Valtteri Bottas, then at Sochi Autodrom, started from second place and his teammate, Felipe Massa, from fourth. Furthermore, Logan Sargent’s current 7th fastest time is the best qualifying result for an American driver in Formula 1 in 36 years: Eddie Cheever started sixth in Detroit in 1987.
The penalty given to Carlos Sainz also puts Sargent’s car in 6th place on the grid for tomorrow’s Grand Prix, and Alex Albon’s Williams in fifth place.
Alex Albon (6th): “Today we did well, we knew this track suited us, although it is always scary when the fight starts because there is a lot of hype and we feel the pressure, so I am very happy with it how everything went.
I had problems with the brakes all weekend and after going off the track in the third practice I had to make some adjustments. I would also like to thank the team again for all their efforts, because the car was in order again for qualifying.
Tomorrow everything will depend on the degree of granulation of the rubber, because the cars that have this problem will probably reduce the pace by about a second and a half and everyone will be able to overtake them.
On Friday we also encountered granularity, but we made some changes to the settings and we hope that the measures taken will help to resolve this.
Of course I’m also happy for Logan, and after starting from fifth and sixth place, where we moved up because of penalties, we just have to finish the race normally.”
Logan Sargent (7th): “Today, from the third training, everything went very well. I am very happy that in all three sessions I was finally able to reveal our potential. It’s even more fun to do it in Vegas, helped by the fact that our car drives fine here.
It’s not easy to show results like that, and it’s great that we were able to do this during qualifying. Today is a great day for our team and everyone deserves congratulations. We worked hard, knowing we had a good chance this weekend, so we started.
Both our cars will start close to pole position, and that is the most important thing. The speed of the FW45 on the straights means it can cause problems for all competitors, and we will try to exploit this advantage. I hope we can continue to show such good results and have a confident race.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
