Williams has only scored one point so far this season, courtesy of 10th place for Albon in the Bahrain season opener. At this point in 2022, it had three of its eventual eight points.
Despite the downturn in the constructors’ standings, the ‘supertimes’ metric that records each team’s fastest lap during a race weekend indicates that Williams has closed the gap to leading outfit Red Bull by 0.74 seconds over an average 90s lap compared to last year.
For the four rounds covering the Australian to Monaco GPs, Williams was between the seventh and eighth-fastest team before dropping to the bottom of the pile at Barcelona last weekend.
Albon reckons this is owed to moving away from the street circuits that have dominated the start to 2023, with the slippery Willia …