One of his best Formula 1 races, according to Alex Albon, was the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday, when he battled valiantly to earn himself a championship point.
The Williams driver previously outperformed himself on Saturday when he qualified in ninth place, which was also his best finish of the year. But a slew of engine-related penalties that punished a number of drivers allowed him to move up three spots on the grid.
Despite losing a position at the start, he maintained P7 for the first few laps of the race before tyre rotation took hold and caused him to drop in the standings.
Albon, who relied on a medium-to-hard-to-medium two-stop strategy, clawed back to finish just inside the top-ten in the second half of the race. Later, he managed his tyres wisely to hold onto P10 as he held off a train of five cars to the finish line.
“It was a tricky one out there,” Albon commented after the race. “After the start, I was like, ‘it’s gonna be a long race.’ I could already feel it on the laps to grid, that the degradation was going to be really high.
“It was amazing how the track temp just made the tyres struggle that much more. Pirelli have a very high minimum pressure limit and it just really doesn’t suit us with the downforce set-up that we had in the car.
“In sector two there was a lot of [tyre] management but at the same time I couldn’t manage much by the end of that race and we were holding on.”
The Williams charger was relieved to see the chequered flag
“It was, in my opinion, one of the best races I’ve had in Formula 1,” he added.
“It felt like that last stint, just holding on and couldn’t make any mistakes, obviously, or else we were going to get passed straight away.
“But the top speed saved us a little bit and I’m glad I saw the chequered flag.”
Albon thought it was to his benefit that a train of vehicles had formed behind him, lead by Lance Stroll and including Lando Norris, Yuki Tsunoda, Zhou Guanyu, and Daniel Ricciardo.
“The more I saw, the better I felt, because I was like ‘the train’s forming, that’s nice, that means everyone’s got a bit of pressure themselves”, he said.
“When it’s just you and a car behind, they can afford to drop back, they can come back at you, do different things.
“But when you have a train, everyone has to follow the speed and they can’t afford to cool the tyres down, the brakes or whatever it may be.
“So when I saw the train, I was like, ‘yeah, good, bring it on.'”
After finishing in the top ten in Melbourne and Miami, Albon finished in the tenth position in Spa. But it is unquestionably a unique race.
“Of course we had a good race in Melbourne, we had a good race in Miami,” he said.
“I feel like we were on the same strategy as everyone else today, we couldn’t be as creative just because the deg was so high today.
“Maybe it wasn’t my best race, but it felt like it was considering what we had and the pace that we had today, to get a point was a really good jo.
“It’s great for the team and for everyone, that’s the positivity that we need to take on with us into the next few races.”