Alex Albon reveals Williams weakness exposed by delayed 2026 F1 start

Williams Formula 1 driver Alex Albon explained that the team's delayed start to the 2026 season exposed weaknesses in the business.

Delays with the FW48 forced the Grove outfit to miss private testing in Barcelona at the end of January, meaning it arrived at pre-season testing in Bahrain already a step behind its competitors.

After battling an overweight car in the opening three rounds of the season, Williams currently sits ninth in the constructors' championship with two points. 

During an interview with Up To Speed, Albon opened up about the frustrations within the team at the start of the year after coming off the back of a strong 2025. The James Vowles-led team finished fifth in the 2025 constructors' championship, and Albon's team-mate Carlos Sainz secured two podiums in Azerbaijan and Qatar.

"It was a bit of a frustration for all of us, really. If you think about how every year it feels like things are going forward and then, as we got into this year, it was looking positive, and then the last few months before we got going things got delayed and one thing led to another and suddenly we were really on the back foot," the Williams driver explained.

"It's not where I believe we belong, but at the same time, it's in many ways exposed some areas that we have been weak as a business, and so we need to figure out why this regulation change put us so far on the back foot.

Alexander Albon, Williams

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

"From 2022 to 2025, the cars were changing, obviously, the cars were upgrading and getting better, but the strain on the team when you do a regulation set is completely different, and as I said, it just exposed some bottlenecks in the factory."

When asked if missing the Barcelona testing was a big deal, the Thai-British driver added: "It all matters. The valuable track time, especially with the lack of testing. Obviously, for us as well in FP1, FP2 and FP3, now, so much of that time is spent on deployment and working on the software basically of the car.

"You can't afford that many rake runs, aero testing runs. We do all these kinds of things in a shakedown. We couldn't really do much of it, so we still do it now. And I think that's just a bit of a residue of missing testing."