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The opening phase of the Formula 1 season has brutally exposed the scale of Williams’ underlying problems, with the Chinese Grand Prix weekend highlighting what may be the most concerning flaw yet.
After arriving late to pre-season testing and running significantly overweight, the FW48’s difficult birth was immediately evident. The car lacked pace, and the weight deficit provided an obvious explanation. But as Alex Albon made clear in China, that is no longer a sufficient excuse.
"We can’t hide behind the weight," he said.
The issues run deeper.
Albon endured a bruising weekend in China. Multiple set-up changes failed to improve the balance, and reliability problems following a gearbox change ultimately prevented him from starting Sunday’s race.
"Nothing seems to fix the car," he admitted.
At the centre of the problem is a phenomenon Albon described as the car “three-wheeling.”
Three-wheeling occurs when one tyre — typically the inside rear in a corner — lifts or becomes significantly unloaded. Even if the tyre does not fully detach from the ground, reduced load creates the sensation and effect of running on three wheels.
The consequences are significant:
The result is a car that lacks consistency and confidence in medium- and high-load situations.
Excessive roll stiffness or aggressive ride height under high load transfer can contribute to such behaviour. The FW48 features a high-rake design for 2026 and has appeared notably stiff since testing. Whether the real-world behaviour aligns with simulation expectations is now a serious question.
"There's a lot of balance issues in the car," Albon explained. "We aren't seeing some downforce as well, so it's an accumulation of things."
Weight reduction remains part of the recovery plan, but it is being addressed in parallel with efforts to rebalance the car and unlock downforce more quickly.
Crucially, this is not an isolated complaint.
Williams has long struggled to deliver predictable behaviour in long-duration corners, particularly when braking and lateral load are combined. Straight-line braking has been stable, but corner entry under combined forces has repeatedly exposed weaknesses.
Historically, the team has believed its suspension lacked the compliance needed to provide Albon with the strong front-end response he prefers in medium-speed corners. The inside rear would begin to lift. Locking the differential can reduce excessive slip, but that often introduces understeer — a trade-off that is difficult to resolve without addressing the root cause.
Albon suggested that overnight changes in China may have pointed toward a solution, and one frustration about not starting from the pitlane was the inability to test those adjustments in race conditions. However, in the broader context of persistent issues, it felt more hopeful than definitive.
April’s race-free calendar may offer welcome relief.
Williams must first navigate Japan next weekend before a month-long window to address what Albon described as an "enormous" list of issues. These include:
China illustrated the fragility of the current package. While Albon was sidelined, Carlos Sainz salvaged ninth place in a high-attrition race. The result was unlikely, and it does little to mask the broader concern: neither driver currently enters a weekend with genuine confidence.
"We know we are too slow and we are too slow compared to where we wanted to be, compared to where we expected to be," Sainz said.
He acknowledged that weight is only part of the deficit.
"Part of that is weight that we know we need to get out of the car but another part, a very big part of it, is downforce that we need to improve. We haven't been the most reliable car also."
His verdict was blunt.
"Honestly we need to level up because we're having too many issues in too many areas and as a team, we need to dig deep."
The two points scored in China may serve as motivation, but they do not disguise the scale of the challenge. The FW48 is not simply overweight or temporarily out of tune — it appears fundamentally unsettled.
Unless Williams can stabilise its mechanical platform, recover downforce, and restore reliability, the season risks becoming an extended recovery operation rather than the step forward it had anticipated.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.
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