The upgraded Williams Formula 1 car is faster but trickier for its drivers as it ended a tricky run of form to lead F1's midfield once more at Spa.
Alex Albon will start an excellent fifth on the grid for Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix, behind only the McLarens, Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull .
That’s Albon and Williams’s best qualifying result of 2025 - in fact, their best since Albon’s fourth on the grid at the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix. And it follows Carlos Sainz's sixth place in the sprint race at Spa on Saturday.
Plus, it comes at a time when Williams has seen its once-comfortable lead at the head of midfield eroded after a miserable run of form in which it as become the lowest-scoring midfield team.
Albon was punching the air in celebration at just scraping through into Q3, only to then beat all of his midfield rivals and George Russell’s Mercedes to fifth on the grid.
That was despite Albon feeling “less competitive during qualifying than I was at any point before the qualifying session”.
That struggle can partly be explained by Williams trimming some of the downforce from his car after a frustrating sprint race stuck in DRS trains, leaving Albon with less grip but more straightline speed.
Williams also adjusted his battery management, which had cost Albon in sprint qualifying.
Then in Q3, Williams found the tyre “sweet spot” on Albon’s car and that took him from a marginal Q2/Q3 car to the midfield leader and Mercedes-beater.
But things didn’t go smoothly for team-mate Sainz, who, fresh from finishing the sprint race in sixth place on Saturday morning, found himself slowest of all in Q2 on Saturday afternoon - creating one of the biggest intra-team disparities on the grid.
“We still need to understand because I had a very strong lap in Q1, I think I did a 1m41.6s, which at the time was easy, top seven, and then going into Q2 for some reason I didn't manage to go any quicker,” Sainz said when asked by The Race what went wrong.
“I didn't feel as much grip as I had in Q1. The lap went a bit away from us. But it is true we've gone in different directions with set-up and car balance through the weekend, so I'll need to look if there's something there.
“But at the same time, there's nothing really that explains why, with how strong I've been all weekend, we shouldn't improve in Q2 and go through to Q3.”
The team reckoned this had something to do with track temperature climbing during the session, as well as the new sets of soft tyres available to the drivers being compromised by the particular allocation on a sprint weekend - which mandates a set of new softs be used in SQ3.
Faster but trickier?
Williams brought a suite of upgrades to Spa with sidepod, floor and engine cover changes.
Sainz believes “they've gone in the right direction, they've given us laptime and performance, yesterday and today shows”.
But that’s had an unfortunate consequence.
“It's a trickier car to drive in some ways, but definitely when you put it together it feels a step forward,” he added.
“I think we're going in the right direction.”
The Race put Sainz’s “faster but trickier” comments to Albon, who agreed.
“We obviously haven't done enough laps yet to really set up the car in a perfect place," he added.
“I think a lot of that will come back to us just with set-up changes, being a sprint race weekend we haven't really been able to do much more downforce.
“But, yeah, I think we need to see because it hasn't been the easiest weekend so far just to get the laps together.”
It’s far too early to declare Williams back in control of the midfield fight, but it certainly seems to have made a step in performance that will boost its chances of maintaining fifth.
It might just be that new peak is harder for its drivers to access than before.
