Alex Albon was left delighted with Williams’ performance in Miami as a fifth-placed finish saw him bank more valuable points, while team mate Carlos Sainz was left frustrated despite his P9 result.
With the Williams pair starting sixth and seventh, the team knew points were on the cards – but when their drivers clashed on the opening lap, tensions were running high. In the end the car had more than enough pace to hold its own in the middle of the top 10, with Albon looking particularly quick after he got over some mechanical issues in the first stint.
“Had some really good pace, we were struggling with engine temperatures so [it] was just really important to get past Carlos and then we caught up the Mercs,” Albon said about the early stage of the race.
“Honestly, we had really good pace, I was quite comfortable in my position. I would even argue George [Russell] got a little lucky with the VSC, otherwise a P4 was possible today.
The two Williams drivers fought hard in Miami with Albon coming out on top
«Crazy to say, also just amazing to be able to see the podium – I had George and Max [Verstappen] in my vision, in front of me the whole race without a Safety Car, so yeah that is just testament to the progress we are making at Williams. The track suited up clearly, but very happy.”
Albon later even went so far as to joke that he’d never seen Verstappen from start to finish in a race “even in my Red Bull days.”
With Williams the only midfield team to score in Miami, there could have been much more to enjoy without the disappointment of the Sprint, when Albon finished fourth to earn five points. However, he picked up a time penalty for driving too slowly under the Safety Car, which dropped him down the order and out of the points.
Despite that, the Thai driver was keen to emphasize how well the car had performed across the entire weekend in Miami.
“The car has been feeling quick all weekend, from the very first lap we drove around the track in FP1 I knew it would be a good weekend,» he said. «It’s not going to be like this every weekend, we need to take these moments. It’s why yesterday [The Sprint] was so disappointing – because I thought we might not have a moment again to score points like that.»
While Sainz didn’t quite have the same pace as Albon in the Grand Prix, after the duo swapped positions a handful of times in the early stages, he still came home ninth to bag a points finish of his own. But there were times where more could have been possible as the Spaniard was right on the tail of the two Ferraris and even made contact battling Lewis Hamilton on the final lap.
2025 Miami Grand Prix: Albon and Sainz both complete overtaking moves on the same lap
“The start itself went well, but I was starting on a four-lap used tyre, when the others were on new tyres and I knew this was going to make me slower on the first stint and vulnerable,” he explained, reflecting on his race.
«On top of that I picked up damage in Turn 3 with Alex at the start with slight contact, so I just made my first stint obviously very difficult with the used tyre and the damaged car.
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“Still tried to hold on for my life with faster cars around me, and we were one of the first ones to stop. That gave a much shorter pit stop time to all the cars that stopped three laps later with the VSC. And in the end, I was vulnerable again… That’s why I’m frustrated and why today I think we should have scored bigger points.”
Like his team mate, Sainz was pleased to be fighting with the Ferrari and Mercedes cars on merit – even if he wound up finishing behind those two teams by the end.
2025 Miami Grand Prix: Hamilton and Sainz bang wheels in last lap attack from the Spaniard on the Ferrari
He added: “Very happy and proud as a team to be fighting the top four cars, as also the Mercedes I felt like today we were almost quicker than them. Good news, we just need to keep going as a team. There will be tracks where we might have this opportunity again and I want to be the first driver to maximise it.
“I think last lap, obviously went for it, saw a gap and went for it. I think he [Hamilton] reacted a bit to my move, it caught him a bit by surprise and he started moving left during braking which if you apply the rulebook to the letter you cannot do that as that is moving under braking. But last lap, last corner, everyone is going to be a bit on the limit.”
The Miami stewards did look at the last lap incident between Sainz and Hamilton but deemed no further action to be the result with both drivers taking a share of the blame – Hamilton for braking earlier and Sainz for not pulling out of the move when he hadn’t earned the right to the corner.
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