Alex Albon has reason to believe Williams is “on the right track” after a difficult 2024 Formula 1 season.
Williams’ offseason development chaos was well-documented going into 2024, with noise coming out of Grove that an Excel spreadsheet was used to list parts for new car builds.
This process was thrown out by Team Principal James Vowles and Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry, with both men highly critical of the outdated method of production.
“The Excel list was a joke,” said Vowles (via The Race). “Impossible to navigate and impossible to update.”
A completely overhauled production process delayed Williams’ development of the FW46, with Fry saying he’d “never seen anything like it”.
Still, that chaos is now in the rear-view mirror and Albon is happy that Williams has gone through that arduous process to put a better foot forward.
“When you think about how the car is being built and the whole famous thing around it being on an Excel sheet, and whatnot, that’s all gone away,” Albon told RacingNews365.
“We’re far more current and up-to-date than we were before. There is a learning process in that, and we are still learning. It’s still only been 12 months since we changed all the systems around the team.
“So in many ways, I have calmness, weirdly, to know that the things done were not perfect, and if we’d maybe stayed to our old ways, we’d have been okay.
“But to know that everything’s going in the right direction for the future gives me some calmness and that reassurance that we’re on the right track.”
Albon pleased with Williams change of car concept in 2024
As well as drastically overhauling its production methods going into 2024, Williams also altered its car philosophy with the FW46.
Its predecessor, 2023’s FW45 was a peaky machine, prone to produce miracles in low-drag, high-speed circuits, but under par at other configurations.
Williams sought to bring a more balanced product to the table in 2024 and Albon believes the team was successful in doing so.
“Conceptually, we did a good job with changing the DNA of the car,” said Albon.
“Realistically, I know our car [in 2023] was quite peaky, and we had great performances, and then very bad performances.
“The car [in 2024] was very average in the speed traps, but at least we were not amazing at one track and then bad at another. We were consistently average, unfortunately, in many ways, but that’s what you’ve got to be.
“You can’t be a top midfield team, or you can’t be aspiring to be a top team and have these swings. You need to be well-rounded, and I think we have become more well-rounded, so that’s a positive.
“We focused a lot on low-speed balance. Monaco, Mexico, even low speed in Qatar, Turn 6, Turn 7, we were competitive.”
The reality of the concept shift meant Williams didn’t necessarily have the firepower to punch in dramatic points hauls at the likes of Montreal and Monza, where a pair of seventh-place finishes greatly contributed to the team’s 28 points and seventh-place finish in the Constructors’ standings.
Instead, the FW46 was, as Albon put it “average” across all types of circuits and the team finished with 11 fewer points in 2024 than the year before, sliding to ninth in the table – albeit blighted by multiple high-speed crashes.
Despite the backwards step in results, Albon said ”I don’t think it’s that we overdid it [the concept change], but directionally, we targeted something and we achieved it, so that’s a good thing.
“It’s not like we’ve focused on an area of the car to fix and we weren’t able to achieve it, so that’s also a positive.”
With a more balanced car to work from and better production methods to produce the 2025 challenger, perhaps Albon is right to expect better things from the FW47 and the year ahead.
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