Alex Albon had the stewards’ room booked, an erratic driving charge hanging over him, and a straight answer waiting for anyone who asked. He was, in his own words, running his car right up to the legal limit of a delta time and nothing more. The FIA agreed, and he walked away from the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia without so much as a reprimand.
What Actually Happened at Pit Entry
The incident unfolded during Sunday’s race at Sepang, where Max Verstappen eventually took the win. On the approach to pit entry, Albon’s Williams slowed sharply. Oscar Piastri, running close behind in his McLaren, had to brake hard and take evasive action to avoid running into the back of him. No contact was made, but it was close enough that the stewards felt obliged to open a formal investigation into Albon for driving erratically.
Lando Norris was also investigated for erratic driving in the same race.
The Delta Time Defence
Albon’s explanation, delivered to the stewards and separately to reporters including PlanetF1.com, was that he had realised he was running below the required delta time just before the pit entry road and had to slow to comply.
“I don’t know. I’m just making the VSC time delta. I had to brake, otherwise I was going to go past the minimum delta time, so maybe something there. Maybe he was close to me, also, with the same thing. We were obviously close to each other. I was barely legal crossing the line, so I can’t imagine he would be more negative than me.” – Alex Albon
“Barely legal” is doing a lot of work in that quote. Albon is essentially admitting he cut it as fine as he dared on the delta time, with the side effect of nearly collecting a McLaren that happened to be following him into the pits. The stewards’ notes confirm the stakes: Piastri had to react significantly, and the situation could potentially have developed into something properly dangerous. Potentially, not actually, is the key word doing the stewards’ job for them.
Piastri Himself Wasn’t Fussed
What likely saved Albon more than anything was Piastri’s own reaction once he heard the explanation. According to the stewards’ verdict, Piastri confirmed he considered Albon’s reasoning understandable once he’d heard it. When the driver on the receiving end of a near-miss tells the stewards he gets it, that tends to carry weight, and here it clearly did.
The full stewards’ verdict ran through the mechanics of it plainly: Albon slowed to meet his delta requirement, Piastri had to brake and take avoiding action, no collision occurred, and Albon’s explanation accounted for what would otherwise look like a baffling drop in speed at that exact spot on the circuit. The stewards concluded his actions did not amount to erratic or unnecessarily dangerous driving given the circumstances, and closed the file with no further action.
A Race Albon Didn’t Even Finish
There’s a bitter irony in how much airtime this incident generated relative to Albon’s actual result. He retired from the race in its closing stages with a gearbox problem, an issue significant enough to trigger a late safety car of its own. So the net effect of the afternoon for Albon was this: a steering wheel delta number that nearly took out a McLaren, a trip to see the stewards, a clean bill of health, and still no points to show for any of it. Williams sit on 12 points in the constructors’ standings, ninth of the 11 teams, and a near-miss with Piastri followed by a mechanical retirement is about as on-brand a Sunday as it gets for them this season.
Piastri’s Afternoon Didn’t Get Much Better Either
For his part, Piastri came through the near-miss unscathed and finished the race in sixth, behind Verstappen’s winning Red Bull, Kimi Antonelli in second and Lewis Hamilton in third. It capped a weekend Piastri himself admitted showed McLaren need to improve.
Delta Times Shouldn’t Decide Who Gets Hit
The stewards made the correct call on the letter of the regulations: no contact, a plausible explanation, and Piastri himself accepting the explanation. But a system where drivers are incentivised to brake hard and unpredictably to satisfy a dashboard number, with whoever is following simply expected to react in time, is not a healthy one. Albon called himself barely legal. Next time, barely legal might not be enough.
