Albon explains reasons behind Japanese GP radio outbursts

Williams driver Alex Albon has explained the fiery radio messages directed towards his team during the Japanese Grand Prix.

The Thai-British driver secured a third points finish in succession in a race that lacked much on-track action, where his radio rants became one of the main talking points.

One message heard him contest: "These shifts are so bad. What have we done to them? It's been s**t at the start, it's being s**t now."

Explaining his outburst, Albon said: "I think it was a boring race so they [FOM] kept using my radio messages.

"Shift settings, we've been experimenting with shift settings all weekend and we landed on something we were quite happy with.

"I think in the end, it actually felt better in qualifying and didn't feel that good in the race, so we reverted."

Why Williams 'made no sense'

Albon was also heard telling his race engineer: "You guys make absolutely no sense."

That was down to time lost when left out on a longer first stint, allowing him to be overtaking by Max Verstappen, who had already pitted, and letting rival for the day Isack Hadjar gain ground.

"In terms of strategy, it was more I didn't feel like we needed to lose time behind Max - because he overtook us - so we lost about a second and a half to Isack in that process,"he explained.

"Then we boxed immediately after he overtook me, so I'm sure they'll show me why.

"Maybe I would have come out behind another car, but in the moment, it felt like we wasted a second and a half.

"Obviously, we could have pitted the same lap as Ollie [Bearman, Haas driver], pitted the lap before and we wouldn't have had the issue at all.

"It was more because I guess in my head, I am always racing the car in front, not the car behind.

"I don't want to lose time to Isack, and I think after the pitstop he was about five and a half, six seconds in front and we got it back to three and a half.

"I don't think Isack was possible to overtake but we were trying to get P8."