Alex Albon will likely remember the 2025 season as one of the brightest of his Formula 1 career. Of course, it’s not comparable to his time at Red Bull—even if that period was relatively short—as the Austrian team considered his stint there largely disappointing, despite achieving two podium finishes in 2020: one in Tuscany at Mugello and another in Bahrain, both third-place results.
This season, racing in the iconic blue and white colors of Williams, has not brought champagne celebrations or grand festivities for him or his engineers. Nevertheless, Albon currently sits in seventh place in the championship, having accumulated 70 points, largely thanks to four P5 finishes. What is particularly impressive is that he is ahead of drivers such as Kimi Antonelli, a rookie driving a Mercedes, and Isack Hadjar, another standout rookie in the Racing Bulls, as well as the Aston Martin duo.
Albon explains Williams’ revival: “The car was too stable, we made it sharper”
The 2025 season can be seen as a personal redemption for Alex Albon, reflecting on the challenges he faced during his 2019–2020 years at Red Bull. Speaking on the podcast ‘P1’, Albon reflected on what went wrong during that period: “I wasn’t in the right mindset. I was too focused on myself and lacked the experience to understand what needed to be done.”
Putting that disappointment behind him, Alex Albon has emerged as one of the leading figures in Williams’ resurgence. He admits to significant personal growth and credits much of his professional development to his Red Bull experience and, in particular, to what he learned alongside Max Verstappen: “I learned a lot from him. I saw what he can do. It might sound strange, but one of the questions I kept asking myself was: how is he so fast? What is special about the setup he chooses that saves time on each lap?”
These questions stayed with Alex Albon as he joined Williams, a team with a very stable car that needed to be driven more like a Verstappen-style car to reach its full potential. “I remember when I first joined Williams, I thought: ‘This car is more stable, but it’s not always fast.’ We were losing too much time in certain corners. So we tried to make it sharper. I feel I learned a lot through this process,” he explained to Crash.net.
Alex Albon’s contribution has been a major factor in Williams’ performance, especially this season. The performance gap between him and former Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz Jr has been striking so far, clearly highlighting how pivotal Alex Albon has been in elevating the team’s competitiveness.
Leave a Reply