Alex Albon spots the ‘unique’ way that ‘every’ rival F1 team has hurt Williams this season

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Williams hit the summer break as the best of the rest in the constructors’ standings, but the Grove crew have seen their rival teams start to catch up across recent rounds.

An early flurry of high-scoring results to start the 2025 F1 season from Alex Albon helped lift Williams up from their meagre ninth place in last term’s standings. The nine-time winners of the F1 constructors’ championship only scored 17 points in 2024 but boast 70 so far in 2025.

Williams are even only six points shy of the team’s total from the 2024 (17), 2023 (28), 2022 (8) and 2021 (23) campaigns combined (76). Albon has taken 54 of Williams’ 70 points this term, while Carlos Sainz has thus far scored 16 points since the Spaniard joined from Ferrari.

Yet while Williams sit fifth in the 2025 constructors’ championship after 14 of the 24 rounds due this season, Aston Martin are now just 18 points behind. Sauber, who ranked last in the 2024 standings with four points, are also only 19 points from Williams in the midfield scrap.

Alex Albon finds it ‘unique’ how midfield F1 teams keep delivering successful upgrades

Williams were in a different league to Aston Martin and Sauber following the Monaco Grand Prix in round eight, with their 54 points compared to 14 and six. But Sauber turned a corner with their upgrades at the Spanish GP, where Aston Martin also kick-started their campaign.

READ MORE: Williams star Alex Albon’s life outside F1 with net worth, girlfriend to parents

Aston Martin took further upgrades to the British GP, as well, following their initial package at the Emilia Romagna GP. And the progress that the Silverstone squad and Sauber secured forced Williams to take upgrades to the Belgian GP that they had planned for the Dutch GP.

The progress that rival teams like Aston Martin and Sauber have enjoyed with their updates this season has surprised Albon, as well. He believes the 2025 F1 season has been “unique” in that every upgrade the midfield teams have thus far brought has immediately delivered.

Albon said, via Motorsport.com: “We did notice that we were dropping down the grid from our great start as the others started to upgrade. Something that’s been unique this year is that every single [midfield team] who’s put an upgrade on, it’s worked.

“We generally are running fewer upgrades a year. But when we did put them on, they worked, and we could kind of get away with teams adding upgrades that weren’t working. But, this year, we fell down in a short amount of time.”

Aston Martin and Sauber’s upgrades have shattered Williams’ early advantage

Albon put Williams in a strong position at the start of 2025, when Aston Martin and Sauber were still finding their feet. The London-born Thai achieved fifth-place finishes in Australia, Miami and Emilia Romagna as he started with points in seven of the first eight Grands Prix.

READ MORE: All to know about Williams Racing from team principal to Mercedes ties

But his retirements in Spain, Canada and Austria coincided with their rivals’ resurgences, so Williams thus saw their advantage shrink. Albon has scored points in just two of the last six Grands Prix, yet the 29-year-old did utilise Williams’ upgrade to secure P6 in the Belgian GP.

Fernando Alonso took Aston Martin’s best finish so far this season with P5 in Hungary, as he continued a run of scoring points in five of the last six Grands Prix since penning his first this year in Spain. Nico Hulkenberg even utilised Sauber’s upgrade to finish the Spanish GP in P5.

Fifth place at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in June marked the German’s best result in six years. Yet it ultimately marked just the start of Sauber’s potential with their upgrades, as Hulkenberg took his first-ever F1 podium with P3 in the British GP this July at the 239th try.