Albon topped Q1 on Saturday, ran third in Q2 and then completed the second row of the grid in the final shootout, having lapped 0.852 seconds adrift of clear polesitter Max Verstappen.
Albon had expected a "rubbish" performance for the slippery Williams given the high-downforce requirements of Zandvoort which made the track "one of the worst ones" for the team.
He had anticipated a tailwind into the medium-speed Turn 9 right-hander but this changed "180 degrees" to become a headwind, which paved the way for Albon's surprise showing.
The Thai-Briton told Sky Sports: "There's been this headwind in a lot of these kinds of low-speed corners, braking corners, and we always struggle with low-speed braking.
"When you've got this headwind, it makes everything feel better, it gives you that front load on the car and hopefully that wind's not changing tomorrow [for the race], I hope.
"It's hidden the normal problems that we have in our car.
"The tailwind corners have been normally high-speed corners where our car has never been that bad at, so I think there's an element of that going on."
As per the team's strong one-lap pace at Silverstone, Albon reckoned Williams now needed to "reverse-engineer" the weekend to "understand why it's been so strong".
Source: Autosport