Will Buxton now shares what he’s heard about why Alex Albon stopped on track in testing

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Journalist Will Buxton has shared more information about why Williams driver Alex Albon stopped during the first session of testing in Bahrain on Wednesday.

Fans finally got to see all ten teams in action at the Sakhir circuit, with Max Verstappen unsurprisingly finishing the session at the top of the timing sheets.

Speaking live on Sky Sports, Buxton was down at the pit lane and provided more information on why the 27-year-old’s car stopped on track.

Buxton shares why Albon stopped on track in testing

Long gone are the days when testing sessions were a case of teams simply trying to run as many laps as they possibly could.

Reliability used to be a huge issue at this stage of the year, but nowadays Grand Prix regularly finishes with all 20 cars reaching the chequered flag.

There are still issues to iron out though and Alex Albon was the only driver who stopped on track during the morning session of testing, and Will Buxton has provided more details about why that was the case.

He will hope that by the time they return to the track next week for the Bahrain Grand Prix any issue with the car is fixed.

After such an impressive 2023, Albon will be desperate to build on that this year, especially with the potential moves in the driver market that could take place.

Williams suffer first reliability issue of the year

Asked about what went wrong with the Thai driver’s car, Buxton said: “As I understand it, it was a reliability issue but I don’t think we’re a million miles away if we suggest that it might have had something to do with fuel.

“Be that international or not, sounds like it wasn’t intentional, so yeah, that’s what I’m hearing at the moment, a reliability issue.

“But yeah, I don’t think the fuel is a million miles away.”

Williams also released some information after the session and said: “Okay, so we were working through the programme, through the setup test and then at the start of one of the early ones we had a slight problem, reliability problem.

“We aborted [the] run, boxed, tried to fix it, which took a few minutes in the garage and then thought we’d managed to fix it, went out but had a similar issue so that called time on our running really, so we’re diagnosing and troubleshooting it.”

Buxton’s explanation about Albon’s issues in testing makes sense and he was stopping on the main straight before eventually pulling off the track.

Albon has already admitted that this year’s car is very different to the FW45 and three testing sessions might not be enough for him to fully get to grips with his new machinery.

He’ll be doing plenty of work in the simulator to try and get to grips with the 2024 car, but ultimately, there’s no substitute for being on track and learning about all the minute changes made by the team.