Alexander Albon reckons if Williams had a season like Aston Martin to score in bulk at the start and drop off later, it was still better than how their year panned out.
Even though Williams looked racey at times, they didn’t manage to score enough to put itself in the fifth for sixth place in the standings. In fact, their whole season was derailed by the numerous crashes, which hurt their development programme for 2025 and beyond.
It added to the cost cap bill as well and eventually they paid the price to finish ninth despite promise. Albon feels the one upgrade they had was good enough but they couldn’t capitalise enough. He reckons a season like Aston Martin was still feasible in the circumstances.
The Silverstone-based team started off well but died down. But the points they scored early in the year helped them to finish fifth in the standings. Despite the shortcomings, Albon is not too upset because he is looking at long-term success, which is likely into the 2026 F1 season.
“Yes, my general opinion is a feeling of a little bit of a missed opportunity, I would say, is where I sit,” said Albon to media. “It’s easy to focus on this latter end of the season and the crashes, but realistically, we started with the car overweight. We should have scored points, many more points than the beginning of the year. We had one upgrade, which was a good upgrade.
“And we kind of had a middle part of the season that was respectable. And the plan was always to focus on the future and focus on next year early. And at that point, a lot of teams overtook us. So, if we started off a bit stronger, like what the Astons did, had a bit of a peakier beginning and trailed off at the end, it would still have been a solid season, but we didn’t.
“In the end, I’m not too upset. I think I’m here for the long term. I’m not here for the short-term success, I’m here for the long term, so I’m happy with it. Maybe it is taking a bit longer than we want it to, but I’m glad we have the aspirations to not just be fighting up at the forward end of the midfield, we want more than that. So, the fact that we are continuously sacrificing and sacrificing the years..,” summed up Albon.
Here’s Alexander Albon on transparent James Vowles
Here’s Franco Colapinto, Alexander Albon on the stint
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