Signs of improvement but a familiar position - Williams 2023 season analysis so far

Williams have been one of the pleasantly surprising stories of 2023 so far and yet they still find themselves at the bottom of the constructors' standings.

The British constructor has come out of the blocks with a car that's much more competitive and capable of very good results but there is still something that hasn't clicked.

James Vowles' arrival from Mercedes has had a big impact on the team already and while they have the same number of points now as they did in 2022, the narrative is a lot different.

They arguably lucked into a solitary point at the 2022 Australian Grand Prix but they have been distinctly unlucky to only have one so far in 2023.

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Genuinely quick

Their latest F1 car has some proper pace in it which saw Alex Albon qualify eighth in Melbourne and run as high as sixth before crashing out of the race.

It has been an underlying issue with Albon's entire career in F1 that a crash has never seemed far away despite his undoubted speed behind the wheel.

10th in the opening race at Bahrain has since been followed by two retirements, one of which was a mechanical fault in Saudi Arabia, so it is very much points or bust for the Thai driver at the moment.

He is perhaps struggling with a similar issue to the team in that they have been so used to squeezing any points possible out of an uncompetitive car that they somehow lose their way once they get a good package underneath them.

Settling in

On the other side of the garage, American rookie Logan Sargeant is finding F1 to be a lot tougher than he found Formula 2 in his rookie year in 2022.

The Floridian, who will race very close to home at Miami this season, has not been able to match his team-mate on pure speed yet but did finish 12th in Bahrain.

He has spent almost every lap of his F1 career so far trying to learn anything he can that could help him later in the year.

Last in the championship may be a concern for Williams but the speed is there, it's all about putting everything together in one weekend to start getting the results they deserve.

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