Five Things We Learned from the 2023 Mexico City Grand Prix

The triple-header may be a frenetic three weeks, but it's fast becoming a fruitful few Sundays for Williams Racing after another point-scoring race in Mexico.

Alex Albon doubled up on the P9 from the USGP by taking another P9 finish on Sunday, adding more points to our championship total.

There was more than just a top-10 finish to remember about the 2023 Mexico City GP, though, and here are five things we learned from our time in CDMX.

We've fought hard to attain our P7 championship position in 2023, and adding two more points after last weekend's three has helped us stay there.

We have three rounds remaining, and there's now a 12-point advantage over our nearest rivals in the standings.

That gap has fluctuated over the year, and our time sitting at the bottom of the board when we left Spain now seems so long ago.

One chaotic race in the final three rounds could see that hard work fade away, though, so we will keep pushing all the way to 2023's last lap.

There's something about the Mexican mornings that brought out the best from the FW45 on Friday and Saturday.

Free Practice 1 and 3 had Albono challenging the 2023 champion to be at the top of the timesheets but still very happy to settle for second place instead.

Alex's best laps in both sessions were under a tenth away from Verstappen, and the slippery reputation our cars have built in recent times was the talk of the paddock once again.

We know cooler track temperatures aid our performance rather than the heat, but we loved seeing purple sectors and the Williams Racing colours challenging for the fastest times.

After the elation of impressive Free Practice times, we felt rather frustrated with how Qualifying panned out.

A myriad of problems hindered Logan from setting a valid lap in Q1, and track limits stopped Alex from reaching Q3.

With P14 and P20 starting positions while our nearest rivals outqualified us, it would be easy to write off the weekend.

That's not the Williams way, though, and we regained our composure with a split strategy on Sunday to see Alex scoring P9 and Logan running just seconds behind P10 before his retirement.

Fresh from his first Formula 1 point in Texas, Logan's driving was full of confidence in Sunday's Grand Prix.

A P19 starting slot isn't the easiest place to begin a race at a new track, but Sarge looked at home at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.

Bold moves had our American battling past Magnussen, Alonso, Zhou, Stroll, and Bottas over 70 laps before finishing it off with a sublime pass on Hulkenberg at the Turn 4 chicane.

The P16 classification doesn't tell the whole story, but we know how hard a drive Logan had before his penultimate lap mechanical retirement.

James wasn't on-site in Mexico City, but our Team Principal's presence remained across all our days to help our weekend.

The team talk, a staple of our preparation for any race, had James speaking to everyone from our Grove HQ over a video call, and he was always close by over the three days.

He listened in throughout the race, too, and spoke to both cars as they finished their races,

Logan got the reassurance that "it was a solid race," and James told Alex, "There's not a lot more we could have got out of that today," as Albono crossed the finish line.