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We’ve got to talk about Albon

P2 in FP1. P4 in FP2. Alex Albon understood the assignment at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix weekend.

His form had already been so impressive at the start of the season that an interview was agreed ahead of the last race in Spain, and scheduled for Thursday in Montreal. I’ll admit the big fear with that sort of scenario is how an incident or bad day between the time you speak to a driver and a time the piece is published can completely change the atmosphere around them, but Albon’s pace ensured I needn’t have worried.

At a venue where he finished an impressive seventh two years ago and then pulled off an audacious double-overtake in the wet last season, Albon has good memories of Canada, despite believing it’s a track that doesn’t actually suit his driving style.

But the current focus is about more than just his potential for a strong weekend as a potentially defining season for the 29-year-old is developing. Points in seven of the first nine races – 42 of them to be exact – leave him in the top eight in the drivers’ championship, with double the points of the driver in ninth.

Williams is making huge strides now that the team is gelling together with a single focus, as evidenced by the vastly improved car. Clive Rose/Getty Images

“It’s been really strong,” Albon tells RACER of his season. “I don’t think that it’s been necessarily a different Alex than previous years. I see myself as just driving like I’ve always done, but there’s been such an uplift in the team and everyone back at Grove.

“We’ve really dialed in the weaknesses of the car from the last couple of years, and I would even go beyond my arrival within the team. It just seems like we’re getting forward traction, forward momentum. We’ve improved a lot of areas, but also the balance of the car.

“I think that’s not easy to understand, but we’ve added downforce in a predictable way. It also means extracting lap time and executing laps and getting confidence on street tracks – all these kinds of things add up when the tracks are difficult.

“Australia is a good example. Changing conditions, gusty weather, gusty wind – you want a car that gives you that feeling, that confidence and stability, and we’ve struggled with that for a lot of the previous cars that we’ve had. I think you’ve seen that in some of the crashes that we’ve had, and that’s for now, touch wood, died down.”

Although Albon acknowledges he could be tempting fate with such a comment ahead of a weekend where two drivers hit the wall on Friday alone, his confidence also comes from his own performances.

He admits it took time to get back into the rhythm as a less-experienced driver in 2022 after a year out, but he feels he has made improvements year-on-year that have come in tandem with Williams’ evolution under James Vowles and Pat Fry.

Perhaps the most high-profile addition, though, has been Carlos Sainz, who arrived to great fanfare and has certainly strengthened Williams, but not had the consistent results of his teammate so far. Despite Albon shining, a lot of focus remains on the Spaniard and his impact, but there are no complaints about the team’s newest hire from the existing incumbent.

Albon had a say in adding Sainz to the Williams stable – not only to drive the team forward, but also himself. Peter Fox/Getty Images

“No, I don’t mind that at all,” albon said. “I feel like Carlos has obviously got a lot of feedback and knowledge to give. I listen to Carlos just as much as the team does. I feel like I’m very open-minded in my approach and I want to understand what makes a top team a top team and that’s our end goal. If it can help improve myself as well at the same time, I’m all in it.

“It’s been great to have Carlos in. I think the team have also took him in in a really great way. I think you have to understand it’s not just a one-sided thing. The team has to have that, let’s call it ‘no ego,’ and really understand what areas do Ferrari do better than ourselves and how can we improve from that.

“That’s been great. But also, Carlos aside, there’s just been a huge change within the team as well. It’s all kind of coming together, I feel like.

“On a separate note, there’s differences with things like FP1s, FP2s, having Carlos on the other side of the garage. We can really divide the cars up, come to different conclusions. By FP3, one of us has a better setup or feeling with the car and we can really work together, in that sense, and elevate the performance of the car over a weekend.

“You can imagine, especially in the previous years when I had rookies, it was very hard to do that. We kind of almost followed each other very closely and never really drifted apart from each other too much. That’s been some of the biggest benefits.”

Don’t take Albon’s humility at full value, though, as he was also keen to have Sainz on board to give himself the opportunity to boost his own standing in the paddock.

“[The team] very much opened themselves and let me in the process of the driver’s selection for what was going to be this year,” he said. “I always felt like Carlos was a great, great option – his experience, but also, in many ways, being selfish, I liked to have someone who had a reputation.

“I felt like, in my head, I was doing a great job in 2022, 2023, 2024, but it was quite easily overlooked. As I grew more confident, I knew that it was a good thing to have a teammate that I could learn from, be compared to in many ways and show everyone what I can do.”

Somewhat ironically, having been given improving machinery and a strong teammate to benchmark himself against, Albon’s not seeing the need to impress other teams on the grid, as he feels Williams is on the trajectory to become a front-runner.

“I believe that it will become one,” he said. “I don’t think it will be from next year, but I believe it will become one.

“The board, James [Vowles] and the direction that we’re going in – I believe in the process. Everything James does is honest and he’s very open about the areas that we need to work on and the timescales of things. He hasn’t shortchanged anything. Everything that he’s talked about is happening.

“I like the story. I like the involvement that we’re doing. I feel like I’ve been here from day one, almost actually pre-James – I was the year before. I’ve invested a lot of my time and energy into this team, as has everyone else within it. I want to see where this comes out.”