Williams urged to 'make mistakes' en route to F1 change

Alexander Albon believes now is the time for Williams to make "mistakes" and be more "experimental" whilst the team readies itself for future improvements.

In an exclusive interview with RacingNews365, the 28-year-old explained how the mindset at the Grove-based squad is one of sacrificing now to reap the rewards in the long term.

The two-time podium finisher has been with Williams since 2022 and earlier in the year signed a contract extension that will see him stay with the team until the end of the 2027 F1 season.

Albon is committed to the long-term project and vision of team principal James Vowles, who has set the team on a pathway to modernisation and building for the future, even if it means short-term suffering.

With the comprehensive regulation changes coming into force in F1 in 2026 looming over the entire paddock, Albon sees the benefit in using the next year-and-a-half to "make mistakes" and be more "flexible" in approach.

"Maybe this is me being on the optimistic side, but I see it as a moment where we can afford to make mistakes and to be a bit more flexible and experimental with what we do," he replied when asked if he feels the wait for 2026 leaves him and the team in a state of limbo.

"If we're operating at the top end, one of the top teams right now, and we're just on that cusp, and it's just not quite going our way, you feel like you're a little bit cornered in some ways," he added. 

"And for us at Williams, this feeling of being open-minded and willing to try different things, in some ways you can see it negatively, but I see it kind of like, 'Okay, what does the team need? What areas can we can we affect change?'"

The chassis issue

To illustrate his point, Albon drew upon a high-profile example, and one that has in many ways characterised Williams' season.

The team opted to change the philosophy of its chassis over the winter heading into the current campaign.

"I'll take the most simple [example], which is one of the more talked about ones: us changing the whole chassis side of things from last year to this year, and a totally different way of building up a chassis, [we] managed to take out a lot of weight out of the car - weight that we would never have got otherwise," he explains.

"But in the end, it delayed things, it made things late, and then we created this situation where we're on the back foot for most of the year."

The central motivation for doing so was to produce a more competitive package overall and, crucially, one that was lighter, as highlighted by Albon himself.

Williams has struggled to strip weight from its car throughout the contemporary ground-effect era, with the change in concept providing better access to weight-saving.

'Better we do these things now...'

However, this left the team short on available chassis and it navigated the first few rounds of the year without a spare - something that was not helped by a number of costly incidents for Albon and Logan Sargeant.

It was an issue that came to a head at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, when a practice shunt for Albon forced Vowles into the difficult decision of sidelining his team-mate in order to hand the one remaining chassis to his better-performing driver.

The over-arching consequence for Williams was that it prevented the team from achieving its development targets, with upgrades severely affected by the need to produce more existing parts.

However, Albon can see the advantage of being in the situation Williams currently finds itself in, one where it is afforded the time to course correct and rectify long-standing issues whilst the stakes are relatively low.

"I'm glad we were in a position to be able to do these changes, we're looking far more into the future," he adds.

"If we wanna be a top team, better we do these things now, whilst the time is right and there is no risk in terms of losing out on top positions.

"That kind of approach is how I see a lot of these things. It's like, if we're going to change things, we change them now."