Alexander Albon is not “too shy” to tell Williams what he thinks, according to the team’s Head of Vehicle Performance Dave Robson.
Last year, the team’s ex-Technical Director ‘FX’ Demaison stated that the Briton could be tougher with engineers in the debrief room.
“When he has the helmet on, yes, he can be hard but it should be a bit more harder in debriefs,” he said.
“I explain to him, every day, I tell him you have if you want to be a World Champion, you have to be like this.”
Demaison has since departed the Grove-based squad, as has CEO Jost Capito, with Mercedes’ ex-strategy chief James Vowles arriving in a Team Principal role.
Albon joined Williams last year after a season on the sidelines, and has since secured a multi-year deal with the team.
Speaking at the launch of the squad’s 2023 F1 livery last week, Robson says that Albon has a perfect balance of being both direct and calm when communicating with Williams’ engineers.
“I think he gets the balance about right,” Robson said.
“If you listen to him on the radio when he’s actually out on the track, he’s not shy about telling us what he thinks.
“I think the moment he steps out of the car, he’s got a different character in the way he speaks and sounding much calmer.
“But what he’s asking for is just the same, it’s sort of an emotional switch, it’s on and off, depending on if he has got his helmet on or not.
“I think he gets the balance about right, it did change and improve over the course of the year. He’s demanding, don’t worry about that.
“He knows what he wants. He’s not shy to ask for it, I don’t think there’s a problem there. What he needs is being pushed on, which we hope Logan [Sargeant] will do.”
Albon insists that his working nature is not being hard on his colleagues, pointing out that different people have alternative methods of operating in a workplace.
“I would say the way I go about my business is more to get the best out of the people I work with,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s necessarily always just being hard on people. Everyone works differently, extracting performance in different ways.
“Everyone has different personalities. I’m definitely focused on becoming a team leader and looking at ways to do that.
“But that’s not necessarily giving it the throwing the laptop across the room kind of team.”
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