Alexander Albon’s team mates commanded more attention than he did during 2024. Logan Sargeant was shown the door after (at least) one too many crashes, then Franco Colapinto turned heads on his debut.
The upshot of this was Albon’s performance did not always receive the scrutiny they might have done. Although he claimed the lion’s share of Williams points, an achievement which befitted his experience, he also made rather too many mistakes.He began the year knocking on the door of the points, taking 11th in Jeddah and Melbourne. The latter, of course, came in Sargeant’s car, after Albon smashed his up in practice and Williams team principal James Vowles made the tough call to swap the sole remaining chassis between his drivers.
Vowles’ faith in Albon was ultimately vindicated, though it wasn’t the last crash he suffered. He ended the Japanese Grand Prix in the barriers on lap one after tangling with Daniel Ricciardo
However Albon was consistently the driver who brought Williams closest to the points. He got within five seconds in China, and drove well in tricky conditions in Montreal where he performed an excellent double-pass on Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon, only to be taken out by (future team mate) Carlos Sainz Jnr.
Finally he picked up the team’s first points of the season with ninth in Monaco. He repeated the result after a battling drive at home in Silverstone and again in Monza. Zandvoort could have been even better – he qualified eighth before falling foul of a technical infringement which led to his disqualification.
Albon scored his best finish of the season with seventh place at Baku, but never returned to the points again. His season came to a patchy end which included a few notable errors such as his collision with Oliver Bearman in practice for the Mexican Grand Prix.
But Albon’s nadir came in Brazil, where the team was already growing concerned about its parts shortage. He was flying in Sunday’s postponed qualifying session when he crashed heavily in Q3, ending any chance of him starting a race in which, as the Alpine drivers demonstrated, significant points were in the offing.
There were many other occasions in 2024 when Albon brought home a car which wasn’t a strong contender for a points finish. But there were a few missed opportunities too, which he must not repeat this year when he goes up against his toughest team mate since Max Verstappen five years ago.
Alexander Albon
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 7 | 20 |
| GP finish | 7 | 18 (x2) |
| Points | 12 | |
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Formula 1
- How much F1 will you watch in another packed, 30-race season?
- Hamilton won’t last two years at Ferrari, predicts Ecclestone
- “No doubt” Herta is quick enough for Formula 1 – Ericsson
- I’m not the “really angry guy” I sound like on the radio – Hadjar
- Which of Formula 1’s six rookies will sink or swim in 2025?
Ideals (@ideals)
23rd January 2025, 12:30
Very rough year for Alexander Albon and he has to hope that wasn’t his ceiling. Or else his time with Sainz is going to end up being very reminiscent of his time alongside Verstappen. Of course things are a bit skewed as Williams honestly is still the bottom of the field in many ways as an organization and as the teams around them continue to build and go onto (semi-)works relationships Vowles’ really needs to step his game up and show he’s not just talk. Not having enough spare parts so you can only field one car in the race is really not a situation any of the current teams should find themselves in. F1 business is booming, the money’s there, so I can only see that as a pure organizational failure.
But back to Albon, I think this is a year where he really has to show he’s on par with Carlos. He has many years of experience now and it’s step up time. If he’s too far off of his teammate, then I wouldn’t at all be surprised if he’s out of a seat next year.
BasCB (@bascb)
23rd January 2025, 12:45
YEah, it’s been a while since Albon had a teammate he could be compared to to get some answers. I guess both he and Sainz will hope that Williams manage to take a step forward and have a car and operational team that is able to give them a shot at stable midfield speed
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
23rd January 2025, 12:56
Nah, albon definitely wasn’t performing near his best at red bull, so sainz will definitely not demolish him like verstappen, but he’s likely to beat him at least.
El Pollo Loco
24th January 2025, 17:05
I’ll put money on Alex being found out by Sainz this season. Colapinto was immediately on his pace and remained looking faster until he demolished his car in Vegas after out qualifying him again in an inferior spec car. Albon’s been flattered by having some of the worst teammates in recent F1 history.
David
23rd January 2025, 14:04
I don’t think Albon is under any threat at Williams. He has provided continuity and stability through a difficult time and I think they will be quite happy to keep him on the roster.
Sainz will be disappointed if he doesn’t beat Albon, and rightfully so. Who knows how long it will be before a vacancy appears at Ferrari or Red Bull again? Carlos needs to demonstrate he is deserving of his “best of the rest” ranking.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
23rd January 2025, 14:16
Vowles and Williams acknowledged they were 20+ years behind. That does not get sorted in 1,2 or 3 seasons and some behind the scenes improvements will only long term help on track performances but are necessary. You seems to forget they were 1-2 seconds off the back as recently as 3 years ago when Russell was there, that they now sometimes bother the top 10 is a huge gain and is not all talk by any stretch. At some point you may be right but that time is not now. Performance improvement is not linear. Ask anyone in a midfield team
Riccard
23rd January 2025, 18:26
Coming in and saying the last guys left you 20 years behind isn’t a brave acknowledgement; it’s getting your excuses in early.
The car got 6 top tens in Russell’s last year (2021), 4 in 2022, and 8 in 2023 – so they have consistenly troubled the top 10 for years. That isn’t new; it isn’t an improvement.
Vowles’ first car (2024) has delivered 6 top 10s, essentially treading water.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
24th January 2025, 15:54
Russell started at Williams in 2019 and the car was way off the back. His last season was 2021. You are just cherry picking to suit your obvious dislike of Vowles who delivered those 2023 top tens you eagerly shared . Most people are generally impressed with his honesty and desire to change the team from top to bottom not just take the sugar hit to get a result today. You’re not. So what
Riccard
24th January 2025, 17:42
A bit personal there. You picked 3 years ago when Russell was there (you say you cherry picked it – fair enough); you commented on troubling the top 10s; I just provided the stats behind your claims.
There’s been a lot of putting down of the people who worked at Williams in the past, but in the end I see a trajectory of 6-4-8-6 as broadly consistent achievement.
anon
25th January 2025, 23:01
Riccard, it’s still been a long standing complaint at Williams that the team had a rather archaic way of working, where much of the senior management was criticised for having the mentality of “that’s how we’ve always done things”.
Back in 2021, Patrick Head was talking about how he felt that Williams should have reformed their senior management team years earlier, whilst in 2020 Ralf Schumacher was also talking about, from what he’d been hearing from inside Williams, that the team’s operations were archaic and most of their management should have been reformed years earlier.
Jost Capito was, in 2021, talking about the need to reform Williams’s operations and management structure, and back in 2019, we had Dieter producing articles for this site talking about the need for Williams to reform and modernise their team.
Those are just some of the more recent criticisms, but complaints about Williams having major problems with their internal operations really do go back decades. In his autobiography, which was published in 2015, Mark Webber criticised Williams heavily for “still living off their past successes” when he was there in 2005-2006, not to mention that Frank Williams was treating some of his staff pretty poorly (such as Patrick Head being obviously overloaded with work, but Frank ignored suggestions that he should hire somebody that Head could delegate some of that work to). Nico Rosberg has also talked about Williams having management problems and not treating their staff well either in some of his interviews he gave shortly after retiring from the sport.
You might see it as simply “getting excuses in early”, but we’ve had a string of people connected to the team talking for multiple years that Williams was stuck in the past and needed to modernise the way that it was working.
Edvaldo
23rd January 2025, 13:31
He would have been ranked higher had Seargeant completed the season.
Frank
23rd January 2025, 15:59
Yes, almost certainly, but I do not think that you can hold this against the reviewers. Ultimate car performance is unknown, so your team mate is the only real yardstick.
I think we can already predict with a fair degree of certainty that Sainz or Albon, whoever comes out on top, will be ranked pretty high next year..
sumedh
23rd January 2025, 17:12
Indeed. He was ranked 9 in 1st half. But as Frank said above, we cannot hold it against the reviewer.
El Pollo Loco
24th January 2025, 18:06
And undeservedly so. But these rankings mean nothing. They’re just something for users to comment on or argue about.