Alex Albon had a 2024 F1 season opener to forget for Williams Racing. He was faced with a variety of challenges to handle in Bahrain this past Saturday – none more so than having to manage his Power Unit overheating. By the time the chequered flag fell, Albon – having started P13 – had to settle for P15. Albon said post-race that Saturday might have been “a result of being mileage limited and having issues during testing” and he will be hoping to have better luck in Jeddah.
Albon showed in 2023 that he can be quick off the line with a cool head and so proved to be the case again in Bahrain when he found himself in P11 after just the opening lap. Unfortunately, that was as good as it got for Albon as he then found himself having to manage Power Unit temperatures. With the Williams’ driver stuck in a DRS train the dirty air was heating his car and hindering performance. This point was highlighted by Williams Racing Team Principal James Vowles in his post-race remarks to the team’s official website.
“First and foremost, we suffered a number of issues that really held us back,” stated Vowles. “On lap 2 of the race we started to very significantly overheat the Power Unit. You would have heard a lot of instructions going to the drivers about pulling out, making sure we weren’t behind cars, and we had to drop back against traffic in order to make sure we had the gap required to keep the engine cool.”
Albon shared his thoughts post-race as to where he felt the issue lay.
“This might be a bit of a result of being mileage limited and having issues during testing, I think. We did a bit of race running and it wasn’t that bad but clearly once we hit the – got into – race situation, by lap 2 I was overheating the car – by lap one I was overheating – and we were losing a lot of lap time.
However, there was a positive to take away from Bahrain in that Albon said his pace was ok once he was in clean air and so that bodes well for the races to come. Lessons to be learnt after the opening round with Albon summing it up for the media.
“Just a bit of a messy race on our side,” claimed Albon. “Now, we gotta look through the data tonight and the next three days before Jeddah and try and get a car that’s better.”
The Thai-British driver would later expand his post-race remarks further in Williams’ press release. His thoughts reiterated the fact that he feels longer test running would have paid dividends for the team.
“The car itself was okay but we’re far behind,” Albon stated. “We had issues the whole race with things that if we had done more running in testing, we would’ve been able to avoid.”
The FW46 has a lot more to come performance-wise but the same could be said of many of the midfield. Albon is clearly aware of this as he claimed that the pace of their car relative to the others is quite similar and due to this “that midfield battle is close and will be tough.”
The battle of the midfield could certainly be a highlight of this year’s F1 season seeing how the battle at the front seems to be a foregone conclusion after Max Verstappen’s dominant win in his RB20. Of course, should Alex Albon impress this season, then question marks will continue as to whether he will remain at Williams for the seasons to come. In effect, Williams could be a victim of their own success by having their star driver perform well for them and then lose him to a rival team on the grid in the process of having done so.
