Albon admits wishful thinking during 'frustrating' Williams run

Alex Albon has admitted Williams' form this year has been “frustrating” as it languishes towards the bottom of the F1 pecking order.

The Grove-based squad has bagged four points in the opening 14 rounds, all of which have come through Albon.

Williams entered the season with an overweight car, which it outlined was costing it over four-tenths per lap at the start of the campaign.

Albon has secured two ninth-place results so far this year, but feels Williams could have a much higher point-scoring tally if its car did not have excess weight.

“We've grown up on results, we're wired to think about results,” Albon exclusively told RacingNews365. 

“So I'd say at the beginning of the year when results weren't coming our way, it was a little bit of like wind out of your system and ‘okay, we're not where we want to be’.

“But it was more of a frustrating thing because when I looked at our results, I looked at Bahrain, Jeddah, Miami. and I looked at where we could have been if the weight was out of the car.

“It wasn't like we came into the season, changed all these things and got a car that's on weight and slow.

“It was more like, we've done the right things and we can see where we should be. If everything went right and executed properly, we would have been far more into the points.”

Albon concedes driver issues carries some blame

However, Albon conceded that some blame rests on the shoulders of the drivers.

Williams' development schedule took a knock after a series of costly crashes early in the campaign with Albon shunting in Australia and Japan.

“Likewise, I think our upgrades would have come in earlier, we had our crashes as well,” Albon said. 

“It’s not totally on the team, it's also driver-related - but in combination, everything would have been a bit greener.

“I was kind of in a bit of a ‘I wish we were there’ [mindset] but at least I see that there is performance there, we have made gains. It’s just not as obvious.”

One benefit to Williams' concerns is the guaranteed step in performance once it takes the weight out, compared to an upgrade that can introduce complictions. 

“Weight is such a nice thing because it's such a guaranteed result rather than an update which has its pros and cons,” Albon added.