Alex Albon: Many have made mistakes, including me

After Friday’s practice in Miami, the Williams riders, who talked about the difficulties they had to overcome, mentioned the heat and humidity.

Alex Albon (17th): “The first session went really well, I immediately felt comfortable behind the wheel, but for the second session we decided to try something, and it turned out that we were going in the wrong direction. But at the same time, I already know what needs to be done to prepare properly for Saturday’s qualifying. I really hope so.

With practice being interrupted many times by red flags, we haven’t been able to properly test how the car behaves over long series of laps, but I think everyone is about on an equal footing.

It’s hot here, the degree of rubber degradation is quite high, but in general I think the car runs well and with a high fuel load.

The characteristics of the track are that off the main stretch the tarmac is very dirty, and if at least a quarter of the car ends up on such a terrain, it will inevitably be followed by a departure. At the same time, the width of the track allows you to choose different routes in many places, so while preparing for qualifying, I will try to prepare an action plan for tomorrow.

But it’s really hard to fly, we saw a lot of riders make mistakes, including me. But on Saturday we will try to compete for the second part of qualifying.

Nicholas Latific (18th): “During the second session I felt the car lose power and I just tried to get to the pits, but I couldn’t. The team continues to understand the causes of what happened, so I can’t say exactly what happened yet. But I’m sure we’ll solve everything by qualifying.

Of course you want to do more laps on every new track, especially on a track as unique as this one, but when red flags appeared, everyone had to stop working. Therefore, it was impossible to get an accurate picture of the car’s behavior on a long series of circles. If I said we’re happy with the number of laps we’ve been able to do, it wouldn’t be true. However, everything is on an equal footing.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out tomorrow as it promises to be back to how it was during the first session when we felt like we were in a sauna.

The main factor is the very high humidity. I haven’t played in Singapore yet, so maybe Miami isn’t as extreme as there. Of course this is also a serious test for the riders, for the equipment and for the tires, so the race promises to be interesting.”