Alex Albon: “We Are 50 Seconds Behind the Midfield”
Alex Albon has put numbers to the disappointment, the Thai Williams driver, far from sugarcoating reality, has bluntly exposed the magnitude of the regression the British team is going through in the 2026 season: "Realistically, right now we are finishing races about 50 seconds behind the midfield, we are losing more or less a second per lap in races. It would have to be quite a big upgrade to recover that" declared Albon, summarizing the abyss that separates the FW48 from its direct rivals.
The contrast with 2025 is devastating. Last year Williams closed the season as fifth placed, with Carlos Sainz scoring three podiums between Azerbaijan, Qatar and the United States. The team seemed to have found its place in the midfield and the FW48, the result of considerable investment in resources and time, was supposed to consolidate that progress, however the FIA's new technical regulations have blown up Grove's plans. Williams currently occupies ninth position in the constructors' championship with just eleven points, behind Audi and Haas.
The Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid was a relentless mirror of the situation, Albon was lapped and finished fifteenth, only ahead of Oliver Bearman, Fernando Alonso and Valtteri Bottas. Sainz, for his part, was involved in a touch at the start with Yuki Tsunoda, suffered another contact with Alonso's Aston Martin and ended up retiring, a weekend to forget that confirms the FW48 is not up to expectations.
The situation has led James Vowles, the team principal, to make a drastic decision. The Briton admitted that Williams is already focused on the development of a new chassis that will arrive at the end of the season with a view to 2027, which implies that what remains of the championship will be used to gather data and not to pursue immediate results, a strategy that, while making sense in the long term, could turn the rest of the year into a real ordeal for Albon and Sainz.
The Thai driver also put the difficulty of the task into context: "The interesting thing this year is that normally midfield teams bring one or two upgrades during the season, this year even the midfield teams are bringing three or four upgrades and on top of that, the size of those upgrades is huge" explained Albon, underlining that competition in the midfield has intensified and that Williams risks being left behind permanently if it does not accelerate its development.
Azerbaijan marks a key moment in the calendar for Williams, the team plans to introduce a major upgrade to the FW48's chassis for that round, but Albon is cautious about its real impact: "We know it's going to be a good step, is it going to be the whole step we need? I have hopes, but I don't think it will be" he acknowledged. The Thai driver knows the difference is so big that a single upgrade will not be enough to fight with Alpine and the rest of the rivals again.
Williams faces a complicated end to the season, with its sights set on 2027 and the hope that the new chassis returns the team to the competitive path. Meanwhile, Albon and Sainz will have to deal with a car that is not up to standard, manage frustration and take advantage of any opportunity that arises to score points, the journey through the desert has just begun.
