Alex Albon has revealed Williams’ main target for the 2025 campaign, with the team hoping to become the ‘best of the rest’ behind last year’s top four group of McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes.
Williams caught the eye during pre-season testing a fortnight ago, with Albon’s new team mate, Carlos Sainz, topping the combined timesheets after three days of running around the Bahrain International Circuit.
It naturally led to plenty of talk about Williams’ prospects, and while Albon moved to calm that expectation ahead of the opening round in Australia, he praised the Grove-based outfit for a “fantastic job” in preparing the FW47.
Indeed, after its predecessor was initially overweight and hemorrhaged lap time until upgrades rectified the situation, there are no such issues with the new machine – with both Albon and Sainz talking positively about its characteristics.
New Williams signing Sainz posted the fastest time during pre-season testing
Asked for his take on the testing period and the subsequent hype around Williams, Albon began with a smile: “I think you’re [the media] putting the expectation on more than us!
“I think we had a good test. Obviously, the results are as they are, but we know that that’s testing. I’m sure we were running a bit more performant in terms of fuel loads and engine modes than maybe some other teams.
“The fight’s in the midfield for us. The main takeaway I’ve seen from this car is just the amount of work that’s been put in behind the scenes. The car feels like it’s in a good place in terms of [being] on weight, parts and everything else.”
Later pushed if Williams can lead the fight behind the top four, should that pack remain out of reach in 2025, Albon added: “It’s our goal. I’d say that’s our target.
“We have to be realistic. I think Alpine are looking very strong as well, possibly maybe a little bit stronger. I think it will be very track dependent.
“I think we’re going to go into this season maybe with the closest season on record, so one-tenth, two-tenths is going to be pretty much, I think, the whole midfield spread. It’s going to be very tight.”
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Sainz echoed Albon’s cautious optimism, stressing that “progress” is the key for Williams throughout 2025 as they look to improve on their ninth place classification in last year’s Teams’ Championship.
“It’s definitely been a positive start,” he commented after moving over from Ferrari. “As I’ve said many times now, I think the positive start started in the [2024 post-season] Abu Dhabi test already.
“As soon as I jumped into the car and started working with the people that I was going to work with this year, I felt I had just joined a team full of motivation, people wanting to bring this team back to the front. The car also didn’t disappoint me.
“We’ve had a strong winter in development. We’ve tried to hit the ground running this year. We had a positive test. Having said that, what you call positive, are we going to be half a second, one second off the leaders? I don’t know.
“But hopefully we can show progress. I think that’s the fundamental word that we want to do this year, keep showing progress as a team and see where we end up.”
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