Williams driver Alex Albon has indicated the team could be “falling behind” in Formula 1‘s midfield battle after encountering difficulties as the season has progressed.
The Grove-based squad has enjoyed a positive first half of the 2025 campaign, already tripling its 2024 points haul with a number of competitive showings.
Whilst there has been much to be happy about, there is no doubt that the team are finding a number of stumbling blocks.
The most notable is an issue with the car’s inability to cool, leading to unwanted in-race management and, on occasion, retirements.
The British Grand Prix saw some further positivity despite an ultimately disappointing result, with Albon managing two points in ninth, scant reward for some good pace.
When asked after the race how he would sum up the team’s first half of the season, Albon told media including Motorsport Week: “Strong start, strong middle.
“This is the first race I’ve finished in a while now. We finished and we scored points.
“We’re not in a bad place. We’ve just had a rough time of it. We’ll have more time to go through the data from this weekend.
“We’ve done a few tests in the car to see where this overheating problem is coming from.”
Albon added that this is an ongoing issue that needs to be rectified from the next race in Belgium onwards, particularly as he has noted teams in and around Williams are improving.
“We need to still get on top of that for Spa,” he said. “At the same time, I see Sauber, I see Haas. They’re all getting quicker and quicker.
“They’ve put upgrades on their car. We’re now falling behind.”
Albon confirmed that the team is working on upgrades for the car and is hoping that once they are implemented, the car will rejoin its initial upwards trajectory.
“At least these last couple of weekends, we haven’t been the fifth quickest team,” he added. “We’re definitely further down than that. We’re doing upgrades.
“We want ones sooner rather than later. It will come on the car. Hopefully when it does, we can get back to where we were before.”
Sainz confirms Williams upgrade is ‘coming’
Albon’s team-mate Carlos Sainz cut an unhappy figure after the race at Silverstone, finishing 12th and outside the points, saying he was “fed up” with how things aren’t going his way.
But the Spaniard had previously stated similar in the days leading up to the race weekend, rueing bad luck and some strategic errors that had led to both himself and Albon being unable to fulfil the car’s potential.
“We are trying our best to get on top of all these issues and situations,” Sainz told media including Motorsport Week.
“One thing that is keeping us calm and encouraged is that the speed of the car is there.
“I’m very confident we could have won the midfield battle in Austria, even almost starting from the back with the pace we had.
“Every race we are actually very quick and we have a very competitive car but we just need to start putting things together and making less mistakes as a team which I think will come.”
Sainz confirmed that the upgrade Albon then alluded to after the race is “in the pipeline that has been there for a while,” adding: “So we are also encouraged by that.
“We are just not going to keep falling back for sure and at the same time that’s the thing, even if we haven’t developed the car.
“I’m extremely confident that both Canada and Austria, even Barcelona, we could have caught a point if we execute things well.
“Monaco, there’s all these consecutive weekends in a row where the car potential and the speed of the team, the two drivers, has been much higher than the results that we’ve achieved so we just know that we just need to do normal weekends like we were doing at the beginning of the season and it will come.”
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