Williams can "definitely" improve on last season – but Alex Albon has warned fans not to expect any miracles this year.
Despite their rich history in Formula 1, Williams are currently enduring one of their most difficult periods. They were the least competitive team on the grid last year by a long way – and another change of leadership this winter provokes further questions about what the long-term plan is for them.
They revealed the colours of their new FW45 on Monday. Though it remains to be seen how competitive it will be, they will hope to at least reap the benefits of accelerating their development of the car midway through the 2022 campaign.
Albon will work with new team-mate Logan Sargeant to help push the car further in the right direction as much as they can. Although the British-Thai racer is optimistic ahead of a new season, he is under no illusions regarding the size of the long team task his team faces.
"Obviously, Logan is coming in with fresh experience, or let's just say, less experience than someone like myself," he said at the season launch event. "But it's kind of just trying to keep it real. A lot of it is just trying to work together. We've got a long road ahead, realistically speaking.
"We've driven the sim now for a month, we're making inroads. The main thing is that feedback is the same, we've got similar areas that we want the car to improve in. So we've been chipping away at it.
"And as we've said before, it's a real team effort here to bring the car up the field. We need to be open and honest with where we are and see how it unfolds itself in Bahrain.
"It's hard to say [how competitive Williams will be in 2023]. I would say that we are definitely in a better position ourselves than we were end of last year. But I don't know how that translates to the circuit, I don't know how big of a step everyone else is going to make. Only time will tell.
"When you drive on a simulator, there's a lot of different things that can be misled, correlation and whatnot, you never quite know. So for now, we're in a better place. But it's hard to say really where we stand."
