Williams drivers longing for upgrades to halt midfield slide

Alex Albon has expressed concern that Williams risks slipping further in Formula 1’s fiercely competitive midfield if upgrades to their FW47 don’t arrive “sooner rather than later”, a view shared by his teammate Carlos Sainz.

After a promising start to the 2025 campaign – already tripling last season’s points tally – Williams has hit a mid-season roadblock, plagued by car cooling issues and missed opportunities.

Albon managed to finish ninth at his home race at Silverstone, bagging two points and breaking a string of retirements. But the Thai-British driver admitted the result doesn’t tell the full story of the team’s struggle to stay competitive.

“Strong start, strong middle,” Albon said at Silverstone of the team’s campaign so far, quoted by website Motorsport Week.

“We finished and we scored points. We’re not in a bad place. We’ve just had a rough time of it. We’ve done a few tests in the car to see where this overheating problem is coming from.”

With Spa-Francorchamps looming, Albon knows the team must act quickly to address its issues –particularly as several of its midfield rivals have surged forward with fresh upgrades.

“We need to still get on top of that for Spa,” he stressed. “At the same time, I see Sauber, I see Haas. They’re all getting quicker and quicker. They’ve put upgrades on their car. We’re now falling behind.”

Hope Riding on Upgrade Package

The team’s technical group is working on a long-anticipated upgrade package, and Albon is hopeful that once it arrives, Williams can reignite its early-season form.

“At least these last couple of weekends, we haven’t been the fifth quickest team,” he admitted.

“We’re definitely further down than that. We’re doing upgrades. We want ones sooner rather than later. It will come on the car. Hopefully when it does, we can get back to where we were before.”

• Read also: Sainz reaffirms commitment to Williams amid Red Bull rumors

While Albon salvaged some pride at Silverstone, his teammate Carlos Sainz endured a frustrating weekend. The Spaniard was running inside the points when an unfortunate contact with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc knocked him out of the top ten.

The four-time Grand Prix winner didn’t hide his frustration, voicing concern over missed opportunities and a failure to capitalize on the car’s clear potential.

“We are trying our best to get on top of all these issues and situations,” said Sainz.

“One thing that is keeping us calm and encouraged is that the speed of the car is there. I’m very confident we could have won the midfield battle in Austria, even almost starting from the back with the pace we had."

“We just need to execute”

Despite the hiccups, Sainz remains optimistic that a turnaround is within reach – if the team can clean up its execution and bring upgrades on schedule.

“Every race we are actually very quick and we have a very competitive car but we just need to start putting things together and making less mistakes as a team which I think will come,” he said.

Sainz confirmed that the upgrade Albon alluded to is already in motion.

“It’s in the pipeline that has been there for a while. So we are also encouraged by that. We are just not going to keep falling back for sure.

“Even if we haven’t developed the car, I’m extremely confident that both Canada and Austria, even Barcelona, we could have caught a point if we execute things well.

“There’ve been all these consecutive weekends in a row where the car potential and the speed of the team, the two drivers, has been much higher than the results that we’ve achieved.

“So we just know that we just need to do normal weekends like we were doing at the beginning of the season and it will come.”

With both drivers pushing from the cockpit and patience wearing thin, all eyes now turn to next week’s Belgian Grand Prix – where Williams hopes its upgrade gamble will pay off and breathe new life into its midfield ambitions.

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via X and Facebook