In the round-up: Alexander Albon believes his Williams team scored points every time they had the opportunity to in 2022.
In brief
Williams ‘scored points whenever we had the chance to in 2022’ – Albon
Alexander Albon believes his Williams team scored points every time they had the opportunity to in 2022.Williams finished tenth and last in this season’s constructors’ championship after scoring a total of just eight points. Despite scoring top ten finishes in just five of the year’s 22 grands prix – including Nyck de Vries scoring an eighth place in Monza when Albon was medically unable to race – Albon believes his team still capitalised on the few opportunities they had in the season.
“I feel like the biggest one was being healthy for Monza,” Albon said. “That would have been my main points opportunity.
“Other than that, I’m not sure. I really do feel like in the moments where we’ve had the chance to score points, we have. Unfortunately, that’s where we are this year. It’s been a year where we’ve had everything to go perfectly for us, a bit of fortune as well, and that gets us into the points.
“We don’t want that to happen next year, we need to work hard, we need to really nail the balance issues that we’ve been having this year and if we can get on top of that, I feel like as a team we always seem to be maximising opportunities and that’s good.”
Schumacher pole in Brazil would not have saved his drive – Steiner
Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says that Mick Schumacher’s future with the team would not have been saved had he taken pole position in Interlagos rather than his team mate.
Kevin Magnussen stunned the paddock by securing pole position in Friday qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix in wet conditions. Schumacher qualified slowest in 20th and lost his drive at the end of the season to Nico Hulkenberg. Steiner says Schumacher would not have been retained even if he had been the one on pole in Brazil.
“Nothing would have changed,” Steiner said. “Because you cannot make this decision on an emotional one race or one qualifying result. That would be wrong. It could be wrong both ways.”
Bottas planning to compete in Race of Champions
Valtteri Bottas says he is planning to take part in next year’s Race of Champions over the off-season.
The all-star racing event featuring racing drivers from various international motorsport series will take place in Sweden at the end of January. Bottas says he is intending to take part in the event for the firs time.
“That’s the plan, yes,” Bottas said. “I never done it. At the moment I’m definitely going, so I’m looking forward to it.”
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Comment of the day
After Andretti IndyCar drivers Alexander Rossi and Colton Herta were ranked ninth and tenth in RaceFans’ top ten IndyCar drivers of 2022 list, reader amian believes it speaks more to the team than the drivers…
There’s been something wrong with Team Andretti engineering – everybody seems to be underperforming in their cars. Grosjean hasn’t been any better with them then with little Coyne racing and Herta has looked to have stopped developing forward. I’m sure Rossi will have a much better season next year with McLaren, although with the IndyCar field stacked as it is, it might not neccessarily result in a better championship finish.
amian
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Goldenboy, Lucas, L_A_Munro and Simon Stiel!
Jere (@jerejj)
27th November 2022, 6:27
Williams indeed did & hopefully, next season, they can maximize points with both drivers rather than only one.
I already read Steiner’s pole reference after the Sao Paulo GP weekend (a quite late appearance on Racefans.net) & at the time, I half-sarcastically responded, ‘what about a win?’
I wonder where Bottas was travelling to?
GeeMac (@geemac)
27th November 2022, 6:52
Any RaceFans who live in Dubai should head down to the Gulf Historic at Dubai Autodrome today. I went yesterday and it was a fantastic day out.
There are 70s, 80s and 90s F1 cars and also 80s, 90s and early 00s sportscars, they are all on display and all running on track. There are also some great drivers present (Andre Lotterer, Thierry Boutsen, Emmanuel Collard, Oliver Webb amongst others)… I even bumped int Maaaahk Wibbah in the paddock! You can get right up close to all the cars and there is a good amount of track action, honestly it was a surreal day. Think of it as “Goodwood light” in the desert.
The highlights for me were undoubtedly the noise made by the Ferrari 643 from 1991 (a significant car in the Alain Prost story), the crazy Ferrari 333SP and the show that Lotterer and Collard put on for the fans in their Porsche RS Spyder and Pescarolo Judd respectively during the final sportscar race of the day.
Diez Cilindros (@diezcilindros)
27th November 2022, 7:17
Last time a Brazilian-GP polesitter lost out a drive for the following year was, ironically, Nico Hülkenberg. History often rhymes.
hyoko
27th November 2022, 10:35
Almost but not quite true. Nino Farina won the 1950 British GP which was the first F1 championship race ever. And Johnny Parsons won the 1950 Indy 500 which for the first time was part of the F1 championship but was entered by a totally different set of pilots. After those two obvious occasion, nobody else ever did it except GC Baghetti in the 1961 French GP. Moreover, he had already entered two non-championship F1 races in Italy and had won both. So, GC Baghetti is the driver who won his first three F1 races.
Blame it on the phenomenal Ferrari 156 Sharknose, the car that drove itself to victory, the most dominant F1 car ever, miles ahead of the famous McL MP4/4. GC Baghetti was good but not _that_ good.
Tristan (@skipgamer)
27th November 2022, 14:21
Was really disappointed by Williams this year, I was hoping for Capito to be able to make a bigger impact. If what Albon says is true and the team is operating well track-side then hopefully they can get the engineering a bit more well figured out. To me it has felt like they’re trending upwards, but just not fast enough.