Alexander Albon says Williams has been on the backfoot since the start of F1 2024 season, as he notes about continued overweight issue.
Having ended the 2023 F1 season on a better note, Williams hasn’t had the same amount of success in 2024 so far as they lag behind the likes of Visa Cash App RB and Haas, while even Alpine has leapfrogged them so far as the Grove-based team only in ninth.
The idea of fine-tuning the car to compete at all tracks has so far not worked out for Williams where the main problem of overweight remains. Albon notes that the team were already on the backfoot from Day 1 of the 2024 F1 season.
The delays at the factory only doubled their problems and they are in a catching-up mode since. “I think if you look at where we were…yeah, the delays at the start of the year, we have been backfoot from Day 1 of 2024,” said Albon to media. “We have been paying the price bit by bit.
“The whole reason why we have been delayed is because we have changed so much. We are already in strong position in terms of structurally and growth. Now once with the upgrades coming in and once we start to work together, it would be getting in a better position.
“But I am not kicking myself so much about…considering with the so much changes we have done so far. Despite everything, we are still giving chance to score points but we are not here to score points, we are here to finish in Top 5. We’re still overweight, but nowhere near where we were to start with.
“If you look at how many upgrades there have been from teams around us, we haven’t had almost any major upgrades. We had a front wing in Japan, and then apart from that, it’s all just been weight. So, in some ways, I think it’s positive, because we haven’t put an upgrade yet on the car, and we’re still able to fight close enough to points.
“We do have an upgrade coming. We still don’t want to give a date to it, but I think that’s a good thing,” summed up Albon, who feels Williams would have been competitive if not for the weight issue that has been hitting them since the start of F1 2024.
Yes, the team has had to focus on cutting on weight, but he thinks that they are not dropping performance at the side, they are trying to sort them both together. “It just shows that we’re on the right track,” started Albon. “If anything, in some ways, it proves that we would have been very competitive at the start of the year if we weren’t still overweight.
“It’s not one or the other. You’re trying to do both at the same time, because they go hand-in-hand. Performance-wise, weight’s a guaranteed improvement, but it’s also a very expensive thing to chase. There’s a lot of testing, crash testing, all this kind of stuff that needs to be done when you start lightening up parts. At the same time, we also need load on the car, so there’s two projects,” summed up Albon.
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