Alexander Albon admitted that the new Williams car is better than last year’s, but the FW46 has not yet reached its full potential and the team is working to unlock it.
The British outfit still hasn’t scored a point in 2024. In Bahrain, both Albon and Logan Sargeant struggled, while in Jeddah, the Thai driver only missed out on points by one position.
Despite finishing P11, Albon believes that the FW46 has a lot more to show, and he hopes that in the next six or seven races Williams will be able to out-develop its rivals and be more competitive.
“Very simply, we’ve got a better car than last year. But so does everyone else. And I’d say Haas in general has been a bit more of a surprise package, they are more competitive.
“We know where our weaknesses are. We know there’s lap time to find. We know where the lap time is. Hopefully, within the next six or seven races we can start finding that performance, and out-develop our rivals.
“We know there’s a good chunk of time in the car. We can’t access it right now. It’s a bit of a shame because I think at least today [in Saudi Arabia] especially there was a chance to score points. We can do it.
“So let’s see for the next few races, hopefully, we’re going to just chip away at it and get quicker and quicker.
“[It’s] not really how we want to start the season. I think we wanted a bit more than this, but it’s only the beginning, and we can fight back.”
Albon continued by underlining that the new car isn’t as fast on the straights as the 2023 spec. Therefore, overtaking is much more difficult, and he needs to pass other cars in the corners rather than easily getting by on the straights thanks to the DRS.
“We don’t have the straight-line speed like last year. So it’s actually really hard for us to overtake.
“I was quite surprised [in the Jeddah race], I had to do all my overtaking in the corners, which is not normal for me! It was interesting. When the DRS train was there, it was impossible.
“And once it broke up, and I could attack a non-DRS car, it was fine, I could get through the field. It is frustrating because we had better race pace – our pace was not bad.”