Alexander Albon believes Williams’ 2024 F1 car is a clear step forward compared to its predecessor in some of its main weaknesses — but the change of the aerodynamic platform and philosophy has brought some new issues to the fore, which the team will have to be “careful” to solve in order to avoid a repeat of 2023.
Whilst 2023 marked a good improvement in performance and championship position for the Woking squad, the inherent issues with the car, especially its low-speed corner balance and instability when running in crosswinds and tailwinds meant the team was always fighting with one hand tied behind its back against some of its midfield rivals on tracks where their car simply wouldn’t work as well as it should.
Speaking ahead of the Saudi Arabian GP, Alex Albon explained how the team was able to fix some of the fundamental issues with the FW45 in the new FW46 – but was quick to point out that with the fixes, came new problems in different areas and type of corners – and expects some upgrades in the pipeline will help make the car more of an all-rounder:
“I mean, if you look at Turn 9, Turn 10 last year, worst corner by a lot in the race and in qualifying,” Albon explained. “This year, actually, Turn 9 and 10 were very strong. We had some issues with some other corners, which is a consequence of making corners like Turn 9, Turn 10 better.
“We need to try and improve these areas. There’s some clear things on the car which we don’t like, which, partly as well, these upgrades should bring it together. For now, though, there’s still a lot of set-up to explore.”
The Thai driver said the team did a lot of experiments in practice for the Bahrain GP in order to find a better through-corner balance, and expects it to continue that way for the first few races of the season, as the team gets on top of its new set-up avenues and possibilities with the new mechanical and aero platforms:
“We spent a lot of Friday exploring during Bahrain, and we had to come back a bit for Saturday, back to how it was in the test. But that search for trying to get a through-corner balance better, that’s going to be, I think, a big talking point for us in the next four or five races as we just try to learn the car we’ve got.“
“There are a few things going on,” he said when asked about the new problems that arised. “I think the through-corner balance is mostly traction-related. Long corners where you require quite a lot of gentle acceleration, that’s where we were particularly weak in Bahrain. When there was a tailwind, especially on top of these long corners, it was an amplifier to our issue.”
And whilst the two-time podium finisher is confident that the team will be able to cure some of those problems, he’s wary that they have to be “careful” in order to avoid just going back to the same issues of 2023 again, ending up in a vicious cycle:
“We can fix some of these issues. We need to be careful because we don’t want to then just go back to last year’s car. But we’re still exploring and there’s definitely lap time in it, for sure.
“I can’t give you a number, but if we can improve that, we’re going to make a better race car as well. We’ll be better on the tyres, too.”
Despite pointing out some fresh weaknesses in Williams’ latest project, Albon is confident that the new car will allow the team to be more “in line” with its competitors at most circuits, by virtue of not having one area of the car significantly better than the other, and instead having more of a balanced set-up that will ensure no heroics — such as in Montreal last year — are needed to secure a decent result:
“Exactly. I think it should put us far more in line, so we should be more competitive in the tracks that we weren’t good at. Monaco being a nice example of that.
“I feel like saying that though, it hasn’t made a huge step. RB have made a huge step. So yes, we are going to be more competitive, but it’s only relative to how everyone else is doing.
“It could be some of the assistance that these guys have had from their friends, but otherwise, it’s awfully tight. On my side, I’m actually more interested in these circuits. I want to see when we go to Monaco, how is the pace of the car going to be? Are we going to be totally different to where we were last year or not?”
