Alex Albon and Williams are hoping for a “good improvement” from a new upgrade package inspired by Red Bull’s RB18.
On Friday, the London-born Thai driver debuted the heavily revised sidepod concept at Silverstone which shifts away from the ‘size zero’ approach originally taken by the Grove-based team.
And commenting on the alleged similarities to the Red Bull, Albon isn’t surprised to see a convergence in car design start to take place.
“I think as you’ve seen, everyone’s been going towards a certain concept. I think, as we know, everyone started a bit different,” he said on Thursday.
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“It’s either the kind of the Ferrari concept or the Red Bull concept, that seems to be adopted.
“Our one looks more like the Red Bull car, but I wouldn’t call it a like for like. It’s the direction that we’ve headed into.
“This is a big update,” he added, “there aren’t many things on the car that had the same part as two weeks ago, so it is pretty big.”
Some rumours ahead of the weekend suggested Williams’ upgrade could be worth up to a whole second in lap time, a prediction Albon hopes will be accurate.
“It’s hard to say what we’ll do, I think a second, if we took that, we would be very happy,” he said.
“But yeah, truthfully, speaking until we drive the car, we won’t really know. But we obviously are hoping for a good improvement.”
Usually it needs a pretty well-trained eye to spot the differences when a team brings upgrades… Not so with the Williams this weekend!#F1 #Formula1 #BritishGP pic.twitter.com/WOg4vfS0PD
— InsideRacing.com (@INSIDERACINGcom) July 1, 2022
The only downside is the new parts will just be used by Albon until potentially the French Grand Prix later in July.
And teammate Nicholas Latifi, who recently questioned his car’s potential relative to Alex, admits the wait isn’t ideal.
“Even though it’s not on my car, I’m hopeful that it’s going to be quite a big difference. I think, in a few races, I’m supposed to get it,” the Canadian explained.
“It won’t be the next race either, which is obviously a little bit frustrating from a driving side of things, but I’m going to be watching with a keen eye to see what it brings to the other car and hopefully, there’s a relative closure in performance to the next group of cars because I know there are a few other cars here as well bringing some upgrades so we’ll have to wait and see.”
Albon was given priority due to his better championship position having scored Williams’ only points of the season in Australia and Miami, while Latifi is one of two drivers yet to score in 2022.