Last year, driving the slowest car on the grid, in his first season with Williams after a year out of Formula 1, Alexander Albon was easily the most outstanding driver towards the back end of the field.
Heading into year two with new confidence, a new team principal and a fast new car, Albon looked to lead his lowly team from the bottom of the standings at long last.
He did just that. Almost single-handedly, in fact.
Albon’s 2022 season had been defined by him sniping crucial points on the rare occasions the opportunities presented themselves. But in 2023, Williams’ FW45 was a much more capable car than its predecessor and with the field so close together through the season, that gave Albon many more chances to compete for points over the year.
He happily took them, securing seven top ten finishes over the season and missing out in 11th three further times. That rewarded him with a total of 27 points by the end of the year, giving Williams their best constructors’ championship finish since 2017 in seventh and putting him 13th in the drivers’ standings – ahead of Yuki Tsunoda and behind the two Alpine drivers to effectively earn the crown of ‘king of the lower-midfield’.
What stood out most about Albon was not just that he took points, but how. From as early as the opening round in Bahrain, he demonstrated a near-unflappable ability to absorb pressure from rivals over endless laps. He held off Pierre Gasly through the middle phase of the race in Sakhir before fending off Tsunoda in the closing laps to kick off 2023 with a point for tenth place. He took another top ten finish in the Baku sprint race with ninth place, missing out on a second point due to the sprint race points system.
But Albon’s most memorable giant-killing performance of the year came in Canada, where he exploited the strengths of his Williams to reach Q3 and then brilliantly executed a bold one-stop strategy to first keep George Russell’s Mercedes, then Esteban Ocon’s Alpine behind him despite them having DRS for 24 of the final 25 laps of the grand prix to record his best ever finish for Williams in seventh. There were perhaps greater heroics in Silverstone the following month when he beat both Ferraris home to the chequered flag by holding off Charles Leclerc with very smart use of his ERS battery to score four more points at his team’s home race.
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