Why Albon says Williams "can't be relaxed" in F1 2025

Alex Albon has warned Williams not to “be relaxed” for the 2025 Formula 1 season, despite not having to repeat painful 2024 efforts to improve critical car design and build processes. 

Williams started the 2024 campaign with its car significantly overweight – to the extent it estimated it was losing up to 0.45 seconds a lap until it could replace parts with lighter components during its in-season upgrade programme. 

The additional weight stemmed from the team being very late in building the FW46 as a result of its efforts to modernise its car assembly process, which infamously previously involved a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that ran to approximately 20,000 entries to list the required parts, as the team was not using more sophisticated software utilised at other squads. 

This list had only got longer as Williams attempted to make its car lighter overall compared to 2023. 

Williams insiders are now confident it will not have to repeat such a process with its 2025 car, which should also start the year at the 798kg weight limit. 

In theory, this should all naturally give a boost to the team that finished ninth in the 2024 constructors’ championship, having slipped back from being seventh the year before, but Albon is wary it cannot just assume its performance will indeed be automatically better. 

“I don't think it's a year where we can kind of be relaxed, [that] we think that it's all gonna come to us now,” Albon told Autosport in an exclusive interview.

“There's still an element of, ‘keep pushing’ and keep making sure that we're learning and being adaptable.  

Mechanics in the garage with Franco Colapinto, Williams FW46

Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images

“We are gonna arrive to setbacks next year, as every team is, and hopefully now we're in a better place to deal with it.”  

Albon will be joined in Williams’s 2025 line-up by ex-Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, an appointment he views as another positive step for the team as it continues its longstanding effort to return to winning ways in F1. 

“It will be great that once Carlos comes in and integrates himself into the team – his experience and his knowledge from Ferrari is gonna help a lot,” Albon explained. 

“I do think he will be a good team leader as well. He's well-spoken and he's very articulate.  

“He comes from a strong engineering background too, I think he's good in that sense. How we take his information and how we can apply it to our car will be really important, too. 

“I think we're gonna have a strong line up and I just think that we've kind of gone through a lot of setbacks this year.  

“I genuinely do believe that we've learned through a lot of them and I'm excited. I feel more hopeful [for] this next year than I was this year. 

“Just because I feel like we've made a lot of changes. And now we've done, not all of the learning, but a majority of the learning, and now we can use that into next year.”