Williams has only scored one point so far this season, courtesy of 10th place for Albon in the Bahrain season opener. At this point in 2022, it had three of its eventual eight points.
Despite the downturn in the constructors’ standings, the ‘supertimes’ metric that records each team’s fastest lap during a race weekend indicates that Williams has closed the gap to leading outfit Red Bull by 0.74 seconds over an average 90s lap compared to last year.
For the four rounds covering the Australian to Monaco GPs, Williams was between the seventh and eighth-fastest team before dropping to the bottom of the pile at Barcelona last weekend.
Albon reckons this is owed to moving away from the street circuits that have dominated the start to 2023, with the slippery Williams FW45 lacking the downforce needed to compete at a more typical venue.
The Thai-Brit, who finished 16th in Spain, thought that Williams has now been ‘exposed’ as the slowest team in F1 after a better-than-expected start to the term. He said: “I’m happy with myself. I feel like we did a good job. That’s where we are.
“We’ve done a few races now where the tracks have been a bit more, how can I say it, characterful - street tracks and unique tracks.
“You come here to Barcelona and it’s a proper racetrack and it exposes us a little bit.
“It’s no secret, we’ve been saying it more than anyone else, we’re still the 10th-quickest car.
“This weekend kind of showed that. We’ve got some upgrades coming, hopefully sooner rather than later. Hopefully, once we get that increased performance, we can fight in the midfield a bit more again like we were more at the start of the year.”
Albon added that the confidence required for street tracks had allowed him to outperform rivals in more competitive cars, whereas all teams have completed a “million” laps of Spain.
He continued: “We were on unique street tracks with characteristics where with confidence and driving, you can do a little bit.
“Around here, where every team’s done a million laps and every driver’s done a million laps, it’s very hard to break the trend and outperform it.
“It’s quite a tricky track and most of the teams have designed their cars around this place so it looks optimised, and it is.
“You look at qualifying and how close the whole pack is [0.78s covered places second to 19 in Q1], and we were just kind of a step below there.
“We need some upgrades and it’ll come and until then it’s just about maximising the car we’ve got.”
