Logan Sargeant slightly differs from Alexander Albon on differences in the Williams F1 car from last year to this.
Having had the straightline speed advantage last year, Williams tried to bring that down to make a car in 2024 which would suit more circuits than just the ones with long straights. They wanted more speed in the corner and so the compromise was made.
But mid-way into the 2024 F1 season, they have struggled a bit to get the balance right. They have lost some straightline speed when compared to last year, but they haven’t got the necessary amount of cornering speed to help it run smoothly everywhere.
Both Albon and Sargeant have often talked about solving some of last year’s issue but then getting rewarded with another one. The Thai thinks the car is a bit less extreme than last year but when he goes back to read comments from 2023, he finds similar notes.
“There’s still a little bit of similarities between last year’s car and this year’s car,” said Albon to media. “The extremes are much less, but there’s still the feelings like when we look at the comments from the previous year and we can see some synergy in what we said last year to this year.
“But as I said, less extreme, but they’re there. And I think it’s much better now, especially the low-speed corners were something we really struggled with last year. Depending on the low-speed corner, we’re actually quite good this year. I mean, Monaco was a good example of that.
“But even then, some tracks we still have these kind of two or three corners on the track that lose us too much lap time. So La Source and Bus Stop, actually? So, for example, they’re totally fine. We’re good at them corners. It’s more corners like Turn 8, which are these long, low-speed corners.
“And there are high-speed corners we struggle at too, which is why Barcelona we were slow. But yes, there’s… I’m not going to give away too much, but we have similar things, yeah,” summed up Albon. His teammate Sargeant slightly differs in his view as he sees larger change in the Williams car of 2024 than 2023.
He notes of change where one thing has been rectified, but it has created another problem. “I wouldn’t necessarily say it feels the same,” said Sargeant. “I would think there was some very big changes to the car that changed a few of the biggest negative characteristics that we had in the car last year.
“It has kind of moved some of the negatives to other areas. But it’s definitely more put together than it was last year. But clearly we’re still missing pace and ultimately that’s the most important thing to find. So we still have our work to do,” summed up Sargeant.
Here’s Alexander Albon on Williams being on the backfoot
Here’s Logan Sargeant on negative talks
Here’s Logan Sargeant on not needing feedback
Here’s James Vowles on Carlos Sainz hire
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact