Alex Albon rates Williams’ position in the F1 midfield as he admits car ‘needs to go on a diet’

Alex Albon believes that Williams will find themselves in the “bottom half of the midfield” entering into 2026, with the Thai racer conceding that the team’s car “needs to go on a diet” as a priority.

Off the back of a strong P5 finish in last year’s Teams’ Championship, Williams have faced a tougher start to this year’s campaign, having been the only squad to miss the Barcelona Shakedown in January due to delays in the FW48 programme.

While they went on to record decent mileage during the two pre-season tests in Bahrain, the Grove-based outfit seemed to be lacking in performance compared to some of their rivals, with their 2026 challenger currently overweight.

As such, Albon offered a modest assessment during Thursday’s media day ahead of the Australian Grand Prix about where Williams stand following testing.

“I think that realistically, we’re going to be at the bottom half of the midfield,” the 29-year-old said. “We’ve got our work cut out. It’s clear where a lot of the performance is – it’s no secret that we’re overweight, but we have a clear plan.

“The next few races are just about optimising. I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity in these races where the regulations are still so new and reliability is still a question mark.

“There are still points on the table if everything goes right and we execute on our side. That’s how I view it. We’re maybe not where we want to be, not at the speed we had last year, but I think we’ll get there.”

Despite his optimism that things will improve, Albon also acknowledged that it has been “tough” to cope with the drop off in performance.

“It’s tough for myself but it’s tough for the whole team,” he explained. “I think we take it as a group. It’s been frustrating but it’s not from lack of effort from the team or anyone at Grove.

“It’s challenged us, these new regulations and this new car build. We are on the back foot, but we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.”

Focusing on the team’s short-term priorities and possibilities, Albon admitted that reducing the car’s weight is the initial goal before they take stock of everything else.

“The car needs to go on a diet, and then it’s just around analysing our concepts in terms of aero philosophies,” the Williams driver said. “Do we think we’ve gone the right way? Do we need to reassess?

“I think Mercedes are the clear strong ones in our heads for now, and they look a little bit different to us so we’ll maybe have a look at that. For now, none of these things are going to happen overnight. We just need to optimise what we have.

“Reliability down the paddock is going to be a big question mark – it is a new regulation, after all, so if we can get some points for free… Realistically going into this weekend, if everyone finishes then I’m not sure points are in the cards for us, but with reliability, who knows?”