Alexander Albon says Williams Racing need to find a solution to the inconsistences they’ve had with recent cars in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship if they are to make progress in 2023.
The Thai driver scored half of Williams’ eight points in 2022, with his best finish of ninth coming in the Miami Grand Prix. He also scored tenth place finishes in both the Australian and Belgian Grand Prix, while the other four points scored by the team were for ninth place finishes for Nyck de Vries in Italy (as Albon sat out the race with appendicitis) and Nicholas Latifi in Japan.
The performance of the FW44 was very up and down, with Albon feeling it suited certain tracks better than others, and it is important that they can find more consistency with the FW45 if they want to be scoring points on a more regular basis.
“It feels like we’ve had a very similar year to what George [Russell] had been doing previously,” Albon is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “I haven’t been quick in all circuits.
“Our car is quite unique. It seems to suit a certain characteristic of track. And when those moments happen, we seem to be able to make the most of it.
“I think we’ve been very good on Saturday this year as well, which has created opportunities where we otherwise wouldn’t have been close, we’ve been there to fight for it. It’s obviously been in some ways also disappointing, because as the performance side of things goes, we want to be fighting more regularly.
“Sometimes we’d find ourselves in situations where we were P19 and P20. And that’s kind of where we were, we were kind of taking chances when others fail, or aren’t on the top of their top of their game.
“And obviously, I think we want to make it that when we do well, that’s when we’re scoring a lot of points, and when we’re not doing so well, we’re still chasing points. That’s not the case at the moment.”
Albon says the team cannot afford to leave any stone unturned if they are to move forward in 2023, and the limitations that have affected them in recent years need to be addressed.
And the former Red Bull Racing driver has the belief that Williams can turn around their fortunes and move up the grid next season.
“My main thing really is you can’t leave any stone unturned,” Albon added. “The limitations of the car are really clear, in terms of driver feedback, what the guys see in terms of GPS data, where we’re losing in certain corners.
“It’s quite obvious, the areas we need to work on. To achieve that though is obviously another thing. It has been a characteristic in the car, previous to this year, talking 2017, 2016, there were already signs of this kind of balance, and so for us there’s obviously a big focus on getting the rolling pin out and starting to smooth it out.
“We’ve got to look in every area, we can’t put the blame on one side of the team. And we’ve really got to look at every little detail of performance and see if we can help the car and look at correlation and see if everything’s going well, because I do feel like our car has got some good characteristics in it.
“And at the same time, I definitely feel there are certain characteristics that are limiting us quite a lot. And if we could just get behind that we’ll make big steps forward.
“It’s not just by adding points of downforce, it’s by adding a good balance and getting lap time. And that’s where you see as I said before, just this kind of characteristic side to our car.
“We seem to be very good in certain circuits, and not very good in other circuits. And if we can find those traits and get the right traits in the car, which in general we all know what we need, we should be able to fight more consistently.
“And also have a better platform to build on, because once you get the through corner balance right in all the different speed types and all that kind of stuff, that’s when you can really start to have that philosophy down, and really start building on it.”
