Alex Albon, Williams Formula 1 driver, is optimistic about the new FW46. He claims it has a “very different feeling” compared to to FW45.
Albon in his Williams performed much better at low-drag circuits but it struggled to perform through out the season.
Williams’ focused to clean its car from reliability issue so that it could perform consistently. Albon has practiced its car on simulator and he seems happy about it.
“Very different. More than anything, different feeling, so a different driving style [is needed],” Albon said. “I don’t want to speak too soon, but the FW45 always had some consistent limitations with the car, especially when we went to tracks like Monaco or Barcelona they were highlighted.
“Low speed was always a big issue for us, braking was always a big issue for us, but also high-speed, long corners were difficult for us.
“Definitely, in the simulator you can see that these areas have improved, but at the same time that comes with quite a different driving style. When we hit the track, you can really start to try to understand it and pick it apart.”
He shared the insights regarding the decisions at Williams and how much of his decision contributed toward the newly built car.
Albon said: “It’s not just my , it’s every team-mate, even 2020 and 2021 when I wasn’t even driving the car, it had the same issues, so there has always been an inherent issue with the Williams cars in the last four or five years.
“This year especially, we’ve sacrificed a little bit of development time on the FW45 to focus on the FW46, shorten the amount of upgrades we had on the car, to make sure that we tried to attack this car a little bit more aggressively and really start to change the DNA of the car. That’s the plan. Let’s see if it happens.”
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Williams managed to beat Alpha Tauri for the seventh place in the championship. It scored 28 points, three point more than the Italian team. However, it had a great difference from Alpine which finished six with 120 points.
Albon is quite optimistic about the new car and hopes for a great deal of improvement.
“I would say when you look at where we finished last year, we just about held off our AlphaTauri but when you actually look at the gap to P6 and P5, that still quite a big jump,” he said.
“Then after Alpine you’ve got a rather substantial gap to the Astons, McLarens, Mercedes and you’re basically in the top field by that point.
“I want to be fighting Alpine and nipping on the heels of that top group. I think that’s a realistic performance expectation for us as a team and then let’s see how it how it unfolds.
“Podiums and wins, I think realistically we won’t be there this year. If we can be regularly in the points that will be great.
“With the change of approach with our car, we need to be consistent to be that kind of top six, top five team, which we weren’t last year. And I’m very interested to see how we fare in the tracks where we struggled; Monaco, Barcelona, these kinds of places.”
