Williams Driver Alex Albon out of Monza due to Appendicitis
10 September 2022 (Saturday)— Alex Albon has been unexpectedly diagnosed with appendicitis and will understandably not be fit to race at the Monza Grand Prix tomorrow.
Alex’s seat for the rest of the weekend will be taken by last year’s Formula-E World Champion Nyck de Vries.
Yesterday was Nyck’s third appearance in an FP1 session for the year. He’s a reserve driver for Mercedes, Aston Martin and Williams. Yesterday he drove in Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin so it will be quite the adjustment moving from that to Albon’s Williams.
It will be an interesting topic to keep an eye on during the weekend because according the the rumours, Nyck is set to take Nicholas Latifi’s seat at Williams next year. At the time of this writing we’ve just witnessed FP3, Nyck finished the session with less than a tenth behind Latifi:
- P13 | 1:22:776 | 19 Laps | Nicholas Latifi
- P14 | 1:22.869 | 21 Laps | Nyck de Vries
Nyck is in a very win-win situation when it comes to today’s upcoming Qualifying session because if he out-qualifies Latifi he would have out-qualified a driver that has 3 years experience driving with Williams. If he doesn’t out-qualify Latifi, he still still has a seat in Formula-E next year as a fallback plan. Not to say that either of these drivers have their future in F1 decided by this weekend, but this weekend will certainly be a massive factor!
We’re one hour away from the start of the Monza Qualifying. Looking forward to seeing the outcome of this whole debacle!
Comment your thoughts down below on who you think will come out on top!