Alexander Albon hails work done by James Vowles and the change he has seen at Williams, where he reckons the F1 team can bounce back even from a slow start.
Having joined Williams when the F1 team was undergoing change of ownership when Dorilton Capitals took charge from the family, Albon has seen fair share of troubles for the Grave-based outfit. He saw Vowles coming in to spearhead the damaged ship, as alluded by the team boss often.
Vowles highlighted how he had to do the basics right for the F1 team to operate at the highest level, which they weren’t doing. It took them a while considering the mishaps they had in the last few seasons, but with the arrival of Carlos Sainz, they looked like a formidable line-up together with Albon.
The Thai credited Vowles for the change of attitude. He sees a healthy team now from when he joined, so much that he feels even if they have a slow start, they have the foundations and belief to sort things. He knows that the team can adapt to difficult situations now than before.
“Yeah, I think that there’s no big secrets, just hard work, great leadership from James,” said Albon to media. “We’ve had a few years where we took maybe a step back. I think 2024 stands out to me as a year of setbacks, but the foundations of the team became a lot healthier, and you saw a big jump from ’24 to ’25. I think it was great positivity, great culture within the team, great optimism as well.
“I feel like there’s confidence in the team as well. Next year in many ways it’s not random, but you can start off slow, you can start off quick. I feel like we’re a team that can do great things. I feel like even…it sounds pessimistic, even if we are to start slow, I think we’ve got a great team behind us. We can find solutions and adapt quickly and I’ve been in this team when we did our first regulation change in 2022.
“And it was a tough year. I look at the team now and see how much healthier we are and I have so much confidence in the team to deliver a good car next year,” summed up Albon, who is bracing for a tough winter from 2025 to 2026 with only handful of weeks to be ready for a big change to come. He spilled on his timeline and stressed that time management will be important in 2026.
He feels the time is not enough to be ready as well. “It’s brutal if you want it to be, right? I don’t think it’s enough,” continued Albon. I think I have seven days off. We finish next week, we do some data next week, do the Christmas parties and all this kind of thing. And then we go to the factory and then I go for seven days, I come back, I do Christmas with my family.
“And then on the 27th of December, I start my training camp. And January 5th, so for January we’re back in the factory. So, yeah, not a lot of time to rest, I think the energy management next year is going be so important. I think the teams are going really have to respect that we have…be quite tactically how we go into the year. Because it’s busy from testing, busy from such a short turnaround, yeah, it’s going to be tough,” summed up Albon.
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