Albon: We should have scored more points at the beginning of the year

Williams spent most of their 2024 trying to slim down their overweight FW46, which meant they had only one major upgrade in the second half of the season, and while they showed a brief run of form, they dropped back.

From Monza onwards, Williams took the decision to fire the struggling and crash-prone Logan Sargeant, replacing him with their young driver, Franco Colapinto, who impressed on debut and went on to show some decent performance.

But then Colapinto has a rough run with accidents, something his teammate Albon also suffered from, with the Sao Paulo Grand Prix in particular proving to be an expensive weekend for Williams.

But Albon believes the root cause of the problem was a slow start for the 2024 F1 season, and quoted by Motorsport.com, he said: "My general opinion is a feeling of a little bit of a missed opportunity.

"It's easy to focus on the latter end of the season and the crashes, but realistically we started with an overweight car. We should have scored many more points at the beginning of the year.

"We had one upgrade, which was a good upgrade, and we kind of had a middle part of the season that was respectable. The plan was always to focus on next year early and at that point a lot of teams overtook us.

"So, if we had started off a bit stronger, like what the Astons did, had a peakier beginning and trailed off at the end, we would still have had a solid season, but we didn't.

"I think our best period was in that middle of the season; Monza, Baku, kind of Singapore, that was where our car was performing well, and now everyone's kind of caught up. But we've also just had a lot of bad luck and a lot of issues, a lot of crashes to be fair.

"But in many ways, I feel like it's more of a missed opportunity at the beginning of the year than anything else," the Thai driver insisted.

However, Albon admits he can cope with the disappointment of 2024 knowing the long-term plan team principal James Vowles has for Williams.

He added: "In the end, I'm not too upset. I'm not here for short-term success. I'm here for the long term, so I'm happy with it.

"Team principals can talk, but I think it's quite obvious the setbacks we've had this year. We've been quite public about it, and I think James is very honest with where we are, showing you the direction and the steps back that we're having to make in some places to get into a better place for the future.

"He's very honest with me as well, very open with me, and we have this open dialogue. Maybe it is taking a bit longer than we wanted to, but I'm glad we have the aspirations to not just be fighting the forward end of the midfield.

"We want more than that, so we are continuously sacrificing just to get the upgrades," Albon concluded.

Albon will have a new teammate in 2025, Carlos Sainz, who will join the Grove-based squad from Ferrari as part of Vowles' plan to have a top driver that would help push the team forward.