Alex Albon has explained why he and Williams teammate Carlos Sainz share setup information rather than keeping performance gains secret on their respective sides of the garage.
Williams has endured a difficult 2026 Formula 1 season. The Grove-based team is ninth in the constructors’ championship with 11 points, while Sainz and Albon sit 16th and 17th in the drivers’ standings with six and five points respectively.
Although teammates naturally compete against each other, Albon believes the current limitations of the Williams car make collaboration essential. Speaking on The Fast And The Curious podcast after the Dutch Grand Prix, he explained that drivers at other teams may withhold useful information to gain an advantage, but said that approach would not benefit Williams.
“What happens in some teams, and I know this, is that you will find something on your car, but it won’t be something the other car can’t find,” Albon explained. “It could be a line into a corner, it could be a gear choice, it could be a set-up direction, it could be the way that we implement the electronic system into the car.
You could find something good, but you just won’t mention it. You can keep it quiet to your side of the garage.
“Realistically, for us, at least I don’t do it, so maybe Carlos does it, I don’t know,” he laughed. “But because of the limitations of our car, we kind of work together on it.
“It’s almost like we both have the same feedback with the same problems, and then we can split the cars,” he said. “One car might go, ‘Yes, this is working,’ so the other car joins onto that. Sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh, this works, and this works, so we’ll take a bit of both.’ You kind of chop and change sometimes.
“Oh, this is the wrong way, so now the other car’s gone the other way, so now it’s that way. But there is a balance.
“I remember that happened a lot more when you have two rookie drivers and you’re kind of fighting for the same [position]. You can imagine it becomes a little bit more [elbows out],” Albon added.
