Williams Racing moving in the right direction

Williams Racing had started the 2022 Formula One season with some positive results but as other teams made gains the team would see itself stuck at the bottom of the Constructors' Championship with just three points. So after much anticipation the Williams Team would finally produce a major upgrade package for their problematic FW44 first appearing at the British Grand Prix. The only limitation was the fact that the team was only able to produce one upgraded car for Alex Albon.

The upgrade covered significant external changes to the sidepods, the floor, the engine cover and various aerodynamic devices. But the upgrade would also see major changes in the layout of such items as the radiators underneath the bodywork. It could be said that it was very much a B specification of the FW44 so major were the changes.

The results at the British Grand Prix saw some encouraging on-track performances across the sessions but the team would struggle with their development program over the weekend with wet conditions hampering any serious development. Then the race would see the upgraded car badly damaged in a start accident involving several cars with Alex ending up going into the barrier.

But after some excellent work by the team mechanics the upgraded car would return for the Austrian Grand Prix where Alex Albon would have a far better opportunity to assess the new car given the far improved weather conditions. Again it would only be the car of Alex Albon that would run the upgraded components with Nicholas Latifi being forced to run the older design.

The Austrian GP weekend would see Alex 12th in qualifying before having issues in the Sprint race to then recover to twelfth in the Grand Prix. As for how the team and driver would assess their first runs in the upgraded car across the Sprint race and the Grand Prix at the Austrian event the general view was that the upgraded car had shown a that it could be reasonably competitive but that there was still a lot of work to do to adapt to the updated car.

But regardless the team had learnt a lot over the weekend and hopefully that will give them a good basis on which to tackle the next race in France, where Nicholas will be seen in the upgraded car.

For Williams they are very much playing catch-up with their competitors who have been able to move forward with their development programs early in the season while Williams has had to wait until mid season.

Albon would comment after the Austrian event: "You see the top teams are confident in their base car, and now they're just fine tuning it.

"We've done quite a big change to the car, a different philosophy, which takes much more time to understand. It's a little bit more of a reset.

"Fortunately we got a full race under our belts so we can really pick the pieces out of the data and see where we’re struggling, and maybe the areas we need to improve.”

He added: “It’s our first proper full race with the new aero package. We will learn a lot from today, we’ll have a look at the data and really conclude where we’re strong, where we’re weak.

“Clearly still missing a little bit, but we’re still getting to grips with the car, so it felt like almost a genuine debut outing for the car.

“We weren’t falling away from the pack. We got a little bit of blue flags, which dropped us away from the Haas and the McLarens. So we’re there, we’re not far away.”

"We were really the whole race matching more or less the McLarens. “We got a bit of traffic here and there but I was really happy with our pace. I felt like this weekend we definitely made a step forward, so positive.”

Overall Alex felt the upgraded car achieved the objective of definitely having “more downforce” but he did add that it “tricky” to drive in windy conditions at the Austrian event.

In an interview with Motorsport.com Alex spoke of the upgraded car in the terms of it's a step forward but still a lot of work to do.

Alex said: “It is a little bit trickier to use in some places, especially at this circuit it was very tricky, with the wind changing. I don’t know how the others felt it, but it was a very tricky race to drive.

“But the way I see it is we’ve got the downforce, that’s the important bit, then it’s trying to get the balance into it."

“So we’ve got the rest of the season to do that. And we’ve got a good platform to start on, as I said, you just see it, it’s not the most intricate car in that sense. And we can build on that. It’s a good base.”

Despite been careful about expecting significant improvements coming off previous years where the team had failed to deliver on midseason updates and with it also being very early days in terms of the upgraded cars development it still does seem like it is promising to be able to say that the Williams team has found a solution to their on-track performance issues and that it definitely seems like it is very much a step in the right direction.