Williams System 1 driver Alex Albon defined that the workforce’s delayed begin to the 2026 season uncovered weaknesses within the enterprise.
Delays with the FW48 pressured the Grove outfit to overlook non-public testing in Barcelona on the finish of January, that means it arrived at pre-season testing in Bahrain already a step behind its opponents.
After battling an obese automotive within the opening three rounds of the season, Williams at present sits ninth within the constructors’ championship with two factors.
Throughout an interview with Up To Velocity, Albon opened up in regards to the frustrations throughout the workforce initially of the 12 months after coming off the again of a robust 2025. The James Vowles-led workforce completed fifth within the 2025 constructors’ championship, and Albon’s team-mate Carlos Sainz secured two podiums in Azerbaijan and Qatar.
“It was a little bit of a frustration for all of us, actually. If you consider how yearly it seems like issues are going ahead after which, as we received into this 12 months, it was wanting constructive, after which the previous couple of months earlier than we received going issues received delayed and one factor led to a different and all of the sudden we had been actually on the again foot,” the Williams driver defined.
“It is not the place I consider we belong, however on the similar time, it is in some ways uncovered some areas that we now have been weak as a enterprise, and so we have to determine why this regulation change put us to date on the again foot.
Alexander Albon, Williams
Photograph by: Alastair Staley / LAT Pictures by way of Getty Pictures
“From 2022 to 2025, the vehicles had been altering, clearly, the vehicles had been upgrading and getting higher, however the pressure on the workforce if you do a regulation set is totally totally different, and as I stated, it simply uncovered some bottlenecks within the manufacturing facility.”
When requested if lacking the Barcelona testing was an enormous deal, the Thai-British driver added: “All of it issues. The precious observe time, particularly with the dearth of testing. Clearly, for us as effectively in FP1, FP2 and FP3, now, a lot of that point is spent on deployment and dealing on the software program mainly of the automotive.
“You’ll be able to’t afford that many rake runs, aero testing runs. We do all these sorts of issues in a shakedown. We could not actually do a lot of it, so we nonetheless do it now. And I believe that is only a little bit of a residue of lacking testing.”
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