Ahead of the 2026 F1 Hungarian GP, Alex Albon discussed in a print media session what has unquestionably been a turbulent season for him so far. Currently sitting 16th in the driver standings with 5 points, the Williams driver talked about the complex factors influencing his performance, the impact of the current technical regulations and his approach to race weekends.
Assessing external and internal factors
When questioned about how much of his difficult form comes from internal or external problems, Albon explained that pinpointing a single cause remains rather hard.
He noted that similar struggles are hitting other teams and drivers, as well. He pointed to George Russell and Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes, proving that it is not just happening at Williams.
Furthermore, teammate Carlos Sainz has encountered similar issues, where car performance shifts unexpectedly from session to session. The Spaniard faced this through practice at Spa and Hungary, before it came back to him in qualifying. Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman have also been going through this at Haas.
In the qualifying head-to-head across the GP and Sprint ones both competed in, the Thai driver is 1-12 down against his four-time race winning teammate.
“Honestly, it’s really hard to pinpoint, to be honest with you. There’s so much going on. I think there’s multiple factors. I think if you just take what’s happening to George and Kimi, that’s not a single-car, single-team issue. You can imagine if the works team is struggling with it, it definitely happens to the customer teams as well.
“I can count quite consistently on qualifying sessions, even in Spa, where you should be, let’s say, in front [of your teammate] and you’re not. So there are elements to that.
“There’s elements also to ourselves as well. I think Williams, we are in the process now of understanding, but tCarlos has had this issue too, where it’s hard for us to understand. There’s differences performance-wise, session to session, weekend to weekend, which we’ve sometimes accounted for, sometimes not.”
Albon also admitted that the current F1 2026 regulations go against his own driving strengths and where he feels he makes a difference. Because drivers either take high-speed corners completely flat or approach them significantly slower than before because they are trying to save energy or are already out of battery and way down on power, he feels like he has lost one of his traditional advantages.
“But there’s also, you’re right in saying, it’s not been the cleanest of starts of the year for me.
“But there are elements where I do think these regs are away from my strengths. So things like there is no high-speed anymore. I’ve always considered high-speed as one of my strengths, but we’re now, whenever a corner is high-speed, it’s now either flat itself, like it was in Pouhon, or we’re just arriving so slowly now that they’re not high-speed.
“And then there’s also just trying to understand these regs, the cars, these tyres, they’re quite sensitive, and just at the moment haven’t really found the sweet spot with them. Sometimes I can do okay, but generally speaking, it is tricky. It’s a different driving style for sure.”
Albon on finding a simpler mental approach
To cope with persistent car inconsistencies, the Williams driver adopted a much simpler mental approach over recent race weekends. Rather than getting stuck trying to identify every problem, he has chosen to focus entirely on his driving while the team handles car issues.
He stated that letting the engineering department handle the engineering side has strengthened his recent performances, where he has started getting closer to his stablemate in qualifying.
They now treat the season like a checklist where they slowly tick off problems one by one as the FW48 has been hugely disappointing.
“It’s very psychological this year, in that sense, because there is no easy thing.
“As a team, we’re also fighting extinguishers. We have little fires that we’re trying to put out. So it’s hard to differentiate what’s you and what’s the car and what’s what.
“So all you can do, which is my approach for the last three, four races, is just purely focus on the driving and let engineering do engineering. If you think you’ve done a good job, you’ve done a good job, and kind of leave it like that. So it’s kind of a very simple approach to going into a race weekend, but it’s actually something which I feel like my last few weekends, my performance has got a lot stronger because of doing that.
“Yeah, I think as the year goes on, it’s almost like a cross list. We just cross out, fix problems, and get to the next one.”
Albon adjusting to the new 2026 F1 cars
Albon addressed the mannerism of the 2026 F1 cars and talked about how difficult it feels to measure personal performance. Drivers are forced to constantly adjust their natural instincts behind the wheel.
He recalled the many adjustments made during the qualifying session at Silverstone, which ultimately ended in P16. The Williams driver explained how constantly second-guessing behind the wheel is against everything they have been doing their whole careers: Driving flat out and trying to achieve the fastest qualifying time possible without any energy constraints.
“I think what’s tricky is that as a driver, I think every driver is very open to if there’s a reason why, for example, why you’re slow on a straight or whatever, tell me and I’ll adapt to it, and I’ll figure out a way to drive around it, I think. Sometimes, though, it’s not, it’s very complicated.
“And I mean I can even remember Silverstone. You’re in between qualifying runs trying loads of different things, different styles. I think that it takes the mind away from just driving.
“I’ve said this before, but you’ve only been taught to drive quickly your whole life. You know what is quick, and then suddenly there’s a layer that’s kind of this grey box in the back of your head that’s like, ‘well, if I do this differently, does this help the lap time in a different way?’ It’s not instinctive or natural.
“But then again, it kind of goes back to the question before, just drive and let engineering do engineering.”
