“Holy F*ck!”: Alex Albon Sets Twitter Ablaze After Bizarre ‘Explosion’ at Imola F1 Qualifying

Alexander Albon, the returning F1 driver, who had embraced a heroic spell at the Australian Grand Prix last weekend, suffered an early end to his qualifying outing in Imola this time around.

The Thai-Briton looked quite shaky with the struggling Williams during FP1 earlier in the morning, finding himself lurking almost 7 seconds off the leader, Charles Leclerc. Hence, not much was expected of Albon heading into the qualifying session apart from a potential Q2 entry, thanks to his splendid form in recent weeks.

However, it all fell apart barely minutes into the first part of qualifying, as the rear of his Blue-White Williams dramatically exploded into pieces. It almost looked like his rear brakes had caught on fire, resulting in the poof of smoke. But that wasn’t it as the explosion further led to abundant carbon fiber pieces spilling onto the track as well.

Consequently, the red flags came out, disrupting several drivers’ active flying laps including that of the championship leader, Charles Leclerc, and his teammate, Carlos Sainz.

Alex Albon freaks out as his brake pedal dies

Following the incident, Albon immediately took to his team radio to express his extreme frustration. “Holy f*ck! I just lost a brake pedal,” he said.

Replays showed that it was indeed the rear right brakes that seemed to have failed. And quite interestingly, this isn’t necessarily the first time a Williams caught on fire due to brake failure. Albon’s teammate, Nicholas Latifi, endured a similar incident during the testing days earlier this year.

Hence, it is quite obvious that the team is latching onto a major issue that certainly seems capable of causing more such DNFs in future events as well.

But, there’s also a silver lining to Albon’s incident, at least according to the Lewis Hamilton fans. The seven-time world champion barely escaped what could have been his second Q1 exit of this year. However, had Albon not suffered the brake failure, it is quite safe to say that Hamilton would potentially have found himself in the bottom five.

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But, anyway, assumptions aside, let’s keep our eyes on the ongoing qualifying session, which could well churn out a surprise or two!

F1 Twitter reacts to the Albon incident at Imola

As expected, Twitter lit up the moment Albon caused an early disruption to the qualifying session. Here are some interesting tweets as fans continue to pity the ever-struggling Williams.