After playing a pivotal role in the Williams Formula 1 Team’s recovery from the bottom of the constructor’s standings in 2022, Alex Albon hopes that the team can address the ‘extreme peakiness’ which limited the race performance of the FW45.
Under the leadership of first-time team principal James Vowles, there were plenty of signs that after several years of stagnation, the Grove-based outfit was poised to stabilise and climb back up the pecking order.
Picking up 27 of the team’s 28 points in 2023, Albon was revered as one of the stars of the season as his exploits helped the team to its best constructors’ championship result since placing fifth in 2017.
Outqaulifying rookie team-mate Logan Sargeant 22-0 throughout the year, the former Red Bull driver managed to drag the FW45 to Q3 on seven occasions including a fourth-place grid spot in Zandvoort.
While able to maximise the positives of the slippery FW45 during qualifying, maintaining the relatively lofty grid positions came at a premium as the inconsistency and imbalance of the car broke through in race trim.
“I would say we spent a lot of this year figuring that out because the more we can figure this out, the more it’s gonna help us next year,” the 27-year-old said at the Abu Dhabi finale.
“What’s obvious for us is our car has a big personality in some ways. It has one way that you need to drive it. And at the same time, there are corners that suit it and corners that don’t suit it.
“The peakiness of the car is pretty extreme in some places.”
As such, Williams played to the advantages of the FW45 in qualifying at low-downforce circuits such as Monza and Las Vegas to claim a sizeable points haul on Sunday.
“[Las Vegas], we ran pretty aggressive rim heating to get the tyres to work for the cold track temperatures, it’s what gave us a great result.
“P5, P6 [ in Las Vegas qualifying] but our car was not P5, P6 on paper. It was maybe P9, P10 and likely we compromised too much of the Sunday car for Saturday,” he added. Albon took the flag 12th in Vegas whereas Sargeant dropped to 16th on homesoil.
“We all went into Sunday and within three laps, I was overheating the tires. So, that’s where you see these elements where it can happen generally though Saturday to Sunday we’re quite consistent.“
Expanding further, Albon compared the success of Monza where he converted sixth in qualifying into an equal-season best of seventh on Sunday to a subpar outing in Sao Paulo even before his race came to an end before rounding the first corner in the Grand Prix.
“If you look at, let’s say Brazil compared to Monza, it’s exactly these kinds of issues which we’re trying to fix. There are corners in Brazil, there’s maybe four of them that we’re losing a tenth and a half in each corner and we can’t get around them,” he said of the FW45’s struggles in medium to high downforce trims.
“We can’t stop front locking, we can’t stop understeering off the track. And then at the same time in Monza, we don’t really have a limitation in the car.
“It doesn’t seem to hurt us because a lot of the breaking is straight line, you don’t need to combine too much. And so that’s where you see peaks because our car has good qualities and bad qualities.”
Despite the inherent inconsistency of the FW45, 2023 saw Albon’s value appreciate greatly as he emerged as a mature and stable team leader for the continued rebuild of the 114-time Grand Prix winners.
“Our job next year is to get rid of them [recurrent weaknesses] as much as we can. That’s been in the car for the last 5/6 years and hopefully next year we can finally make some inroads in it.
“But being honest with you from last year to this year, the car characteristic never really changed that much. It’s just we added more downforce to it.”
“At the same time, we’re pretty self-confident in ourselves that we’ve done the right thing and we’ve talked about it enough but we have stopped our development for a long time now and if we lose out for what we’re focusing on for next year, it’s not going to be a kicking ourselves moment. I do think we’re gonna see the rewards next year.”
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