Carlos Sainz<\/a> fell just under two tenths shy of progressing into Q2 but had to settle with 17th, nearly half a second clear of team-mate Alex Albon <\/a>who was a disgruntled 18th.<\/p>\n Albon was hugely frustrated at the performance and handling of his car, lamenting his qualifying in Shanghai as \u201cterrible\u201d over team radio.<\/p>\n After the session, he made the worrying admission that even drastic set-up changes are not improving Williams\u2019 FW48 challenger.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s tough. There\u2019s some weird stuff going on in the car,\u201d Albon reflected to media including Crash.net.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we did some setup changes and pitlane starts all throughout the weekend. I think I\u2019m going to do another one tomorrow, just to keep going and keep learning.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the minute, nothing we\u2019re doing seems to fix the cars. This track will expose us normally, but this is a bit more than I would expect.\u201d<\/p>\n Albon said Williams has been trying some pretty extreme set-up measures to no avail.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going in areas that we\u2019ve never been before and, to be honest, we\u2019ll keep going and getting more steps from that. Nothing seems to fix the car,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure the Cadillac is quicker than us in quite a few corners, so I\u2019m just trying to figure out what is going on. The biggest issue is the three-wheeling, so we need to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cI\u00a0feel like we\u2019re getting to the point where we\u2019re ticking off almost everything we can. So at that point, it\u2019s like now what\u2019s next?<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re going to have that discussion tonight; what else can we do to fix it. I\u2019m just talking balance now, not downforce or anything else.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we\u2019ll have a head scratch tonight, and if we think there\u2019s a theory, I think you\u2019ll see me sat in the pitlane again.\u201d<\/p>\n Williams \u2018cannot hide behind\u2019 weight issues The FW48 is massively overweight<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Williams has massively disappointed in 2026, having hoped to capitalise on the regulation overhaul after being one of the first teams to commit all its resources to the new rules.<\/p>\n But Williams has started the campaign badly off the pace and towards the back of the midfield pecking order, with an overweight car the biggest problem.<\/p>\n It is believed Williams\u2019 2026 challenger is in the region of 20-25kg overweight, though an exact figure has not been confirmed.<\/p>\n But Albon insisted Williams cannot use the weight issue as the sole reason for its lack of performance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot hide behind the weight because, at the end of the day, there are other cars that are up on weight also,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cDefinitely not as much as we are, but they\u2019re still overweight, and the deficit to these teams is not just that.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of balance issues in the car. We haven\u2019t seen the downforce as well, so it\u2019s an accumulation of things.<\/p>\n \u201cThe weight is one thing, there are also plans in conjunction with the weight loss to get the car a bit more in balance and add downforce.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Williams\u2019 current woes, Albon stressed he has faith in the Grove-based squad to turn things around.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s fair to say we\u2019re all frustrated, not just myself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re all aligned on this. It\u2019s been a painful winter, a painful start to the season. It reminds me a bit more of a few years ago than last year.<\/p>\n \u201cI still have faith in this team and it\u2019s just coming from such a high of last year back to where you were before. Everything means a little bit more, but we\u2019ve been here before, unfortunately.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know what it takes to get back, we\u2019re more prepared to get back as well, and we just have to wait. It\u2019s no easy process, and while we catch up, they\u2019re still upgrading and we\u2019ve just got to catch up to our midfield rivals and try to finish the season in a good place.<\/p>\n \u201cBut for now, we are clearly a good chunk behind.\u201d<\/p>\n Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Williams\u2019 painful start to the 2026 Formula 1 season shows no sign of ending any time soon. For…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[14203,64,63,5243,817,806,805,803,804,85,819],"class_list":["post-542071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-alex-albon","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-carlos-sainz-jr","tag-f1","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542071","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=542071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/xpb_1401734_hires.jpg\")
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