Alex Albon has lamented Williams’ competitiveness issues ahead of next weekend’s Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix, as the team continues to struggle for pace.
Williams is enduring a challenging first half of 2026, as the FW47 is a considerable step back on its 2025 counterpart.
The car particularly struggles in high-speed corners, which significantly hindered both Albon and teammate Carlos Sainz in Barcelona.
Sainz finished outside the points in 12th, while Albon, who had been running in a similar position, finished 12 laps down due to an extended stoppage to fix a dislodged camera.
Albon offered a pessimistic assessment of the team’s chances in Austria, given its high-speed-specific second sector.
“If you look at our high speed compared to our midfield rivals, we’re a good chunk off,” he said.
“So obviously, the Red Bull Ring, sector two and sector three is all high speed, so we need to see what we do.
“But we can’t forget, Carlos qualified a second and a half off [Liam] Lawson, so we’ve got some work to do.”
Alex Albon and Williams fighting issues
Explaining his challenging race in Barcelona prior to his stoppage, Albon revealed a technical issue with the car the team could not repair.
“We saw there was a [mechanical] issue with the car after qualifying, so we couldn’t change it due to parc ferme rules, and we used that time in the garage just to – we couldn’t correct it, but we could kind of fudge it to get it back to what it should be,” he said.
“We need to understand it. We can see the car is not behaving, and we need to fix it.”
Albon then reveale dthe knock-on effects of lacking confidence in his car’s behaviour.
“It explains why I didn’t know what car I had in qualifying. Left to right, corner to corner, I didn’t know what the car was going to do. So maybe it gives a bit of confidence to know something. But at the same time, I just want to make sure it’s not there for Austria.
“It’s just how it is. The cars are so new and we’re realising it’s not just about of reliability in terms of PUs, there’s also reliability behind the scenes that the cars are experiencing too.
“We’re going through a bit of a process of making sure the parts on the car are doing what they want to do. It’s part of it. I wouldn’t call it luck, I’d just say we have to get better at it, and do a better job at it.”
Albon’s race in Barcelona demonstrated the mountain the team has to climb to achieve the modest heights of 2025. Expectations will be tempered in Austria.
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