With pre-season testing complete, the 2025 F1 season is just around the corner, and for Williams’ drivers Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz, there is a glimpse of promise within the team.
Unexpected weather in Bahrain
With unexpected and unpredictable weather in Bahrain throughout the 3 days, Sainz described testing as “complicated”, noting that the changing weather conditions made it difficult for Albon and himself to stick to the Williams’ testing run plan.
“It was a bit of a complicated day, a very long day, but a day that we managed to get away with it, do a lot of laps, improvise a bit the run plan as we were moving on, and we managed to complete the whole program.”
Progress within the FW47
While the weather and strong gusts of wind throughout testing slowed Williams down, it didn’t stop the team from making progress.
Albon completed an impressive 137 laps of running on the final day of testing, noting, “I don’t know what it was like for the other drivers, but the morning was really difficult with the wind, and we didn’t really get much of a rhythm.”
“We had a couple of issues on the car which delayed things as well, so we were struggling a little bit to get going.“
Sainz noted improvements in the car’s balance and overall feel compared to day 1, even topping the timesheets on day 2.
“We did some progress relative to yesterday,” he said, “improving the balance of the car and improving the overall feeling with the car.”
Albon, too, found reasons to be positive. Despite having a few lockups and issues on track, he managed to complete several longer runs, ending testing on a high note.
“The good thing is, we know where the lap time is,” he said.
“All in all, I’m positive. The good thing is, we know where the lap time is and I don’t think it’s that hard to achieve, so we’ll do some work around that and get ready for Melbourne!”
Both drivers, however, noted the limited nature of pre-season testing, with Sainz admitting that he wished for more time to experiment and trial the car, despite it appearing to be reliable thus far.
“I feel as ready as I can be with a day and a half of testing,” he said, “I still wish we could try a lot more things. This is Formula 1 nowadays.”
Albon echoed Sainz’s thoughts, “We need to look at some data with a couple of areas we need to focus on.”
