After Williams unveiled its 2024 F1 season challenger, the FW46, in New York City earlier this month, the team hosted members of the media to discuss next season.
During the discussion, Alexander Albon expressed optimism about the challenger for the 2024 campaign.
“It’s a complete departure from the way the team has been designed over the past three or four years,” Albon said in New York City. “I believe we can still keep most of what’s good about us. But hopefully, when we go to tracks like Monaco or Barcelona, we’ll have a car that’s more on the line, rather than a car that’s out in Q1 and struggles. You should see a car along the lines of
Now that the team has completed pre-season testing, what does Albon think of the FW46?
As a car suitable for going to races.
“First of all, we have a good car to race in. I think on the first day and the second day we struggled a little bit with the differences between the cars and rebalanced the car, but we are very happy with the car. “We’ve made a lot of progress in terms of making it more driveable,” said Albon after the team’s test. Report to the media.
Albon drove all of Williams’ final day on Friday, finishing sixth. This time was also his eighth fastest time throughout his three days in Bahrain.
However, that lap was done on C4 compound. Soft tires will not be available at next weekend’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Albon admitted Friday’s performance was “radically staged”.
“As the characteristics of the car changed, we moved some of our historical issues to another area. Still, we were able to fix some, but unfortunately in the process we picked up a few things we didn’t like. We were found,” Albon said. “Nevertheless, we had a bit of an extreme set-up today, but it worked in the right direction. Looking at the rest of the grid, the midfield is a lot closer with everyone making big jumps from last year. , it’s pretty even across the field. There will be a lot of interesting battles this year as it’s all about small details and potential trucks that suit other trucks.”
Williams head of vehicle performance Dave Robson said the session provided a “good basis” to start the season.
“At this time of year, there is a lot of scope to push the FW46 even harder and develop quickly. We will analyze this week’s data and see how we build the car for FP1, as well as the first round of car updates. We will take a few days to decide how to introduce the rounds,” Robson said. “There’s a lot of work to do, but we’re off to a solid start and have a good foundation to build on.”
Last season, Williams managed to pick up points at the opening Bahrain Grand Prix as Albon finished 10th. His teammate Logan Sargent finished a few spots back in 12th place on his first F1 start.
Their fans will be hoping that the “radical set-up” the team adopted on Friday opens the door to more points in the 2024 season opener.
