Alex Albon said his reaction was “dramatic but “genuine” after he called the Haas team “dirty” for slowing down in front of him.

The Williams driver took to the radio to voice his displeasure at Oliver Bearman ahead of him, believing the rookie had slowed down to disrupt Albon’s lap.

Alex Albon reacts to ‘dirty’ Haas comments

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Late in Q2 and with a chance of progressing, Albon met the slow-moving Haas and having ultimately missed out on the top 10, he said over the team radio:

“They were dirty, dirty Haas. They knew what they were doing. They purposely slowed down in the third sector.”

Speaking after he was out of the heat of the cockpit, Albon backed up what he said in the car, even if it was a little “dramatic.”

“I know it looks maybe dramatic, and it is dramatic in many ways, my reaction, but it’s more just the cars are so sensitive to dirty air,” he told PlanetF1.com when asked about his comments. “So the margins are so small and Q3 was there for the taking.

“I was slow in Turn 10 and Turn 12 compared to my previous laps, and that was enough for Q3 so I think.

“It’s genuine. I would have got into Q3 if I didn’t have the dirty air. It’s just that that’s the way it is.”

Despite it being the first grand prix of the season without a Williams in Q3, Albon was left pleasantly surprised having predicted a far worse result.

“I feel like we haven’t gone into qualifying more compromised than we have this weekend,” he said. “We obviously knew we were going to struggle this weekend, I think FP1 proved it.

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“FP2, I was kind of also just relying a bit more on Carlos [Sainz]. Just because he had a bit more than four laps under his belt.

“We had some issues with electronics in our cars. We had to change that as well and we had to use three sets in Q1 so considering all the things that we’ve done…

“I’ve never been out of Q1 at this track, we got into Q2, we almost got into Q3 and I think realistically, if you just take the fact that we had only one set in Q2 we would have got through so all good things.

“It still shows us we have weaknesses, and there’s still the DNA that we need to fix that clearly Barcelona exposes it.”

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