{"id":356606,"date":"2025-12-18T18:37:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/356606\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T18:37:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:37:14","slug":"why-albon-is-certain-williams-will-produce-strong-2026-f1-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/356606\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Albon is certain Williams will produce strong 2026 F1 car"},"content":{"rendered":"

Williams<\/a> Formula 1 driver Alex Albon<\/a> says he has “so much confidence” his team can take another step forward after its rise to fifth in 2025.<\/p>\n

Williams secured a comfortable fifth place in the constructors’ standings as the experienced and rapid combination of Albon and new team-mate Carlos Sainz<\/a> combined for 137 points, the Grove-based squad’s best result in a decade.<\/p>\n

Even if the team has been largely focused on 2026 and beyond, its 2025 campaign is the result of a quick transformation of the squad behind the scenes, led by team boss James Vowles and sanctioned by owner Dorilton Capital.<\/p>\n

Following a troubled 2024 campaign that was marked by costly crashes, a late and overweight launch car and various operational errors, 2025 has given Albon confidence that Williams is now in a much better place to set its sights on the front four teams, rather than look over its shoulder.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had a few years where we took a step back. I think 2024 stands out to me as a year of setbacks,” Albon said.<\/p>\n

“But the foundations of the team became a lot healthier, and you saw a big jump from 2024 to 2025. There’s a great positivity, great culture within the team, great optimism as well. There’s confidence in the team as well.<\/p>\n

\"Carlos <\/p>\n

Carlos Sainz took two podiums for Williams, including in Qatar<\/p>\n

Photo by: Dom Gibbons \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“I feel like we’re a team that can do great things. Even if we were to start slow [in 2026], I think we’ve got a great team behind us who can find solutions and adapt quickly.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been in this team when we did our first regulation change in 2022, and it was a tough year. I look at our team now and see how much healthier we are. I have so much confidence in the team to deliver a good car next year.”<\/p>\n

Williams returned to the podium in 2025 with two hard-earned third places for Sainz in Azerbaijan and Qatar. But Albon was also keen to point out there is still a big gap between F1’s traditional front four of McLaren<\/a>, Mercedes<\/a>, Red Bull and Ferrari<\/a> and the rest of the midfield.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

“The gap from P10 to P5 is smaller than the gap from P5 to P1, or even from P5 to P4,” he pointed out.<\/p>\n

“So, we know that we’ve still got a long road ahead of us, but I’m hoping my podium chances come a little bit sooner rather than later.”<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Williams Formula 1 driver Alex Albon says he has “so much confidence” his team can take another step…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[14203,64,63,817,813,816,85,195277,819],"class_list":["post-356606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-alex-albon","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-why-albon-is-certain-williams-will-produce-strong-2026-f1-car","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}