Albon sees opportunity for adaptable Williams with 2026 regulations

The 2026 season will bring new regulations that are expected to completely change the look of Formula 1. Some differences will be tough to grasp - even slightly confusing - but Williams pilot Alex Albon says the most adaptable drivers and teams will be the ones who prosper.

"In terms of driving style and car setup philosophy, if I'm talking purely car related, you do actually have to stay open-minded because it's going to be different," Albon told theScore before the Sao Paulo Grand Prix. "It's going to be confusing at times. It's going to be a new understanding of how to extract lap time in the car. So, you've got to humble yourself a little bit, recenter yourself, and stay open to the changes."

The impending changes are some of the most radical that F1 has seen in quite some time. In addition to lighter and smaller cars, power units will be equally split between electric power and the internal combustion engine. The drag reduction system (DRS) will say goodbye to make way for a new manual override mode. If that sounds like a lot of change happening at once, it's because it is.

But every moment of change also breeds opportunity.

"I think that the drivers that will perform best and the team that will perform best are the ones that are really adaptable and can deal with all these new changes," Albon said.

The new regulations will wipe clean the advantages McLaren and Red Bull have baked in. For teams like Williams, this is its biggest chance to make its intended leap to the front, even if it means turning the taps off early for development of its impressive FW47 car.

"I'm totally on board with (pivoting to 2026)," Albon explained. "The first year of a regulation change is so important to get right, and it leaves you years behind if you don't shift yourself early enough. So, we're looking as a team to be a podium finisher and an eventual race winner, and you're not going to do that by finalizing this year and expecting performance at the end of this year."

Don't be fooled though. Williams isn't banking solely on winning the rule change lottery or the potential for Mercedes - its power unit supplier - to ace another engine regulation change.

"I think Mercedes are pretty confident with their package," Albon said. "We've seen Mercedes dominate in previous years on a regulation change. I don't think it would be at that level of domination. You never know, but let's just say, we're focused on ourselves, and we've got to extract our car as best as we can. Even if the Mercedes car is the best engine on the grid, we still have a lot of Mercedes-powered teams on the grid as well."

Williams' optimism stems from its adaptability and growth. After all, no team on the grid has undergone a bigger transformation over the last four seasons. From placing last in the championship to Albon's arrival in 2022, Williams is now on course for its first top-five finish in the constructors' standings since 2017, while its 111 points are the team's most since 2016.

The secret formula that Williams believes could soon put it on track to fight at the front is simple, according to Albon, and has much to do with another outsider in James Vowles, who joined the squad the year after his own arrival.

"It's the culture within the team," Albon revealed. "I think culture is the biggest single factor that can influence a team's performance. I don't think there's any individual that's bigger than the culture of a team. I think that's testament to James in the most part, turning around the mindset of the team.

"The approach that we have to race weekends, the open-mindedness, the accountability - these kinds of areas have been worked on. They're not created overnight, and they've been instilled within the team over a lot of James' leadership."

Albon continued: "I often compare it to my time at Red Bull and when I came to Williams for the first time, and I remember the team was maybe a little bit stuck in their old ways, a little bit negative in many ways, and maybe didn't quite have the open-mindedness that I expected or wanted at the time. But then I look at when Carlos (Sainz) joined, and he came from kind of a similar place, coming from Ferrari, and the shift in terms of, 'Okay, what do we have to do to get better?' That kind of hunger and that drive, it was amazing. It was something which I was really impressed by."

It will be a few months until the paddock can tell who has coped best with the 2026 regulations. But until the pecking order is revealed on the track, Albon and Williams believe that they have the ingredients in place to adapt as smoothly as anyone else.