F1 2024 a 'missed opportunity' for Williams

Alex Albon says the 2024 Formula 1 season appears to be a “missed opportunity” for Williams, which has dropped to ninth within the table.

Williams began the season on the back foot of an chubby FW46, and while numerous effort was put into reducing the burden again, this also impacted the upgrade schedule. Right after the summer break, the Grove team added only one significant, two-part update to the automotive.

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This gave Williams a brief window to be competitive in midfield before the rival teams took the lead again, which involved a variety of costly operational errors and breakdowns that further reduced the team's probabilities of advancing.

Albon believes the team must have scored significantly more points at the beginning of the season, which might have given it an actual probability to challenge Alpine, Haas and RB, which might have been possible with a automotive launched throughout the weight limit moderately than well above it.

“My overall opinion is that it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity,” he said. “It's easy to deal with the top of the season and the accidents, but realistically we began with an chubby automotive. We must have scored quite a bit more points in the beginning of the 12 months.

“We had one improvement that was a superb improvement and the center a part of the season was decent. The plan was at all times to deal with next 12 months early and at this point numerous teams were ahead of us.

Alex Albon and Williams FW46

Photo: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“So if we had began a bit stronger like Astons, had a greater start and finished the season, we might still have had a solid season, but that didn't occur.

“I believe our greatest period was in the midst of the season: in Monza, Baku, in a way in Singapore, where our automotive performed well and now we’re all caught up in a way. But we also had numerous bad moments. happiness and plenty of problems, truthfully, many accidents.

“But in many ways I feel like it's more of a missed opportunity at the beginning of the year than anything else.”

Albon finds it easier to take Williams' disastrous 2024 campaign given the plans team principal James Vowles has put together to steer the team out of its current predicament for 2026 and beyond.

“At the top of the day, I'm not too upset. I'm not here for short-term success. I'm here for the long run, so I'm joyful with that,” he added.

“The team principals can talk, but I believe it's quite obvious what failures we've had this 12 months. We've been public about it and I believe James could be very honest about where we’re, showing direction and the steps back that we want to soak up some places to get to a greater place for the long run.

“He can also be very honest with me, very open and we now have an open dialogue. Maybe it's taking slightly longer than we wanted, but I'm glad we now have the aspiration to not only fight against the midfielder. We want more, that's why we continuously sacrifice to recuperate.