New Williams F1 car feels “very different” in the simulator

Williams’ biggest priority for the FW46 was to cure some of its foul handling characteristics and turn it into a consistent points score at a wider variety of circuits.

Having sampled his new kit in the Grove simulator, Albon has been encouraged that the FW46 is already feeling “very different” than last year’s machine.

“Very different – more than anything, different feeling, so a different driving style [is needed],” Albon said. “I don’t want to speak too soon, but the FW45 always had some consistent limitations with the car, especially when we went to tracks like Monaco or Barcelona they were highlighted.

“Low speed was always a big issue for us, braking was always a big issue for us, but also high-speed, long corners were difficult for us.

“Definitely, in the simulator you can see that these areas have improved, but at the same time that comes with quite a different driving style. When we hit the track, you can really start to try to understand it and pick it apart.”

When asked how much of Williams’ 2024 changes were based off his feedback, Albon said: “It’s not just my feedback, it’s every team-mate, even 2020 and 2021 when I wasn’t even driving the car, it had the same issues, so there has always been an inherent issue with the Williams cars in the last four or five years.

“This year especially, we’ve sacrificed a little bit of development time on the FW45 to focus on the FW46, shorten the amount of upgrades we had on the car, to make sure that we tried to attack this car a little bit more aggressively and really start to change the DNA of the car. That’s the plan. Let’s see if it happens.”

Amid optimism over Williams’ capacity to make significant progress this year, Albon thinks closing such a sizable gap in the points table is a healthy goal to set if the new car is as versatile as hoped.

“I would say when you look at where we finished last year, we just about held off our AlphaTauri but when you actually…