Alex Albon has conceded that Williams have a long road ahead to the front of the Formula 1 grid after a disastrous start to the first-half of the 2026 season.
The Grove-based team has started F1’s latest era on a pretty disappointing footing.
11 rounds in, Williams sit ninth in the Constructors’ standings, with an FW48 concept that has proved neither competitive nor reliable.
For Albon, after a strong fifth-placed finish for the British marque last season, the ground realities of the team’s current performance has come as a rude awakening.
The British-Thai driver revealed that, as things stand, Williams have “two or three years” worth of rectifying ahead before it can start thinking about the sharp end of the field.
Having predicted 2027 to be the year that the team finally started challenging the top four consistently, Albon has rendered a telling verdict on Williams’ fate in this current regulations cycle.
“It definitely feels like we’ve taken two or three years back,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“When you look at last year and you think ‘how long will it take for us to become a top team?’… maybe I was optimistic but I genuinely thought 2027, we could start fighting for consistent podiums and maybe challenging for the odd win, leave the midfield and fight with those four teams.
“I do think there is a setback when you look at where we are this year.”
Alex Albon details “shared frustration” over Williams’ 2026 F1 problems
Williams were forced early onto the backfoot after it had to sit out the private shakedown at Barcelona, late in January, this year.
Reports started filtering out that the FW48 was an overweight car, having also failed the FIA-mandated crash tests.
When Williams finally put its package through its paces on track, not only had it missed crucial data gathering but was also nowhere near its midfield target in terms of performance.
Now, with both Albon and team-mate Carlos Sainz’s future within the team in jeopardy, the British-Thai driver has expressed his frustrations over the long journey to redemption Williams finds itself in the midst of.
“It is partly us being late and we have been on the back foot, but it’s exposed to this regulation change,” Albon explained.
“It’s exposed to some of the bottlenecks of the other teams, and we’ve realised there are bigger things that we need to change, which we are correcting.
“But it’s frustrating for all of us. It’s like this shared frustration that we’re just going to have to continue this journey for a little bit longer.”
F1 will return to Zandvoort, for one final time, after the summer break, in late August.
Albon will be hoping to replicate his P5 finish at the Dutch GP, for Williams, in 2025, to bag some crucial points for the team in its quest to climb up the rankings.
READ MORE – Williams insists Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon are ‘settled’ amid 2026 F1 struggles
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