The 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying session was one to forget for Thai-British driver Alexander Albon, who will be starting the race from the very back of the grid. Driving for the Williams Racing team, Albon endured a challenging Saturday at the Hungaroring and admitted after the session that he has struggled all weekend to find the right feeling with the FW47. Despite the setback, the Williams driver has not lost hope completely—he believes that a wet race on Sunday could open the door to better opportunities and allow him to recover lost ground.
On the other side of the Williams garage, teammate Carlos Sainz fared slightly better. The Spanish driver seemed more at ease with the setup of the FW47 and managed to qualify in 13th place, slotting in just behind the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton. While not spectacular, the result at least offered some relief and a foundation for potential points on Sunday.
Alex Albon’s post-qualifying analysis
In his post-qualifying interview, Alexander Albon provided a detailed breakdown of the difficulties he and his team faced during what has proven to be a very tricky weekend in Budapest.
“I think this week we’ve just never really managed to find anything that works,” said Albon. “So we decided to go back to the setup we used in Free Practice 1 (FP1), just to try to regain some feeling and confidence in the car. That was the only session where I felt somewhat comfortable since the start of the weekend. Maybe we experimented a little too much after that, making too many changes—two or three setup directions—and it all showed during qualifying.”
Albon went on to clarify that the session itself wasn’t completely disastrous, but there were key issues that prevented him from putting together a clean lap.
“Honestly, it wasn’t even that bad overall,” he explained. “It was just Turn 1 where I had no grip at all, and I think that was because my out-lap was too slow. When that happens, you begin the lap with poor grip and end it with even less. And on a track like this one, with long, demanding corners, that becomes a real struggle.”
He also noted how tight the field has become in terms of lap times: “The group of cars is extremely compact right now. That’s why we had to use three sets of tyres in qualifying. But clearly, we’re not where we want to be—that much is obvious. We expected a tough weekend. We hoped the updates on the car would give us a bit of a boost, but they haven’t really helped us in these tight and long corners here in Hungary.”
Comparing with Carlos Sainz
Alexander Albon acknowledged that Carlos Sainz appeared to have found a slightly better balance with the car in terms of one-lap performance. Despite that, putting together a complete, competitive lap remained difficult.
“At the moment, it looks like Carlos has found a bit of a better compromise for the single-lap runs,” said Albon. “But it’s not easy at all to string together a full lap. Today, it was really complicated.”
Looking ahead to the race
When asked whether there is any potential improvement in race pace for Sunday’s Grand Prix, the 28-year-old Williams driver was honest in his assessment.
“No… not really,” he admitted. “I’m just hoping for a wet race. That might give us a chance to shake things up. We’re even considering starting from the pit lane so we can change the car setup. We’ll see. If it does rain, we’re already running at the limit of what we can do in terms of a wet-weather setup, so there’s not much more we can adjust. Tonight we’ll go over the data carefully and try to learn whatever we can.”
Reflecting on the weekend overall, Albon added, “Let’s say this is going to be a race from which we try to extract experience—kind of like the 2020 Hungarian Grand Prix. It’s one of those situations where you just try to take something away from it for the future.”
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