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Williams is keen to take a step forward with its FW46 after a steady year in 2023 with the FW45 that banked 28 points and seventh in the championship for the team’s best result since 2017.

Albon has also rebuilt his reputation in F1 as Williams team leader, with his future subject to uncertainty with both Red Bull and Mercedes interested in signing the Thai driver.

Despite the improvements in 2023, Albon felt the car still had fundamental issues at low-speed and in certain types of high-speed corners – something he said previous Williams drivers, including George Russell reported during his time in the car between 2019-2021.

Albon felt working to solve the problems would require a change in the “DNA” of the car and tweaks to his own driving style.

Drastic changes at Williams

“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,” Albon told media including RacingNews365.

“Low speed [corners] and braking were always big issues for us, but also high-speed long corners were difficult as well.

“Definitely in the simulator, you can see that these areas have improved, but at the same time, you can see that it comes with quite a different driving style, which I think really until you hit the track, you can’t really start to try and understand and pick it apart.

“Our limitations [over] the last few years, it was not just my feedback, it is every team-mate since 2020, 2021, when I wasn’t even driving the car, it had the same issues.

“There’s always been an inherent issue with the Williams cars in the last four or five years, and we sacrificed a little bit of development time on the FW45 to focus on the FW46.

“We shortened the amount of upgrades we had on the car to make sure we try to attack this car a little bit more aggressively really start to change the DNA of the car.”