Austrian GP: Confusing Friday for Atlassian Williams Racing


By Williams Racing
June 28 2025

The Friday practice sessions for the 2025 Austrian GP would see the Atlassian Williams Team come away with very different results across the two sessions. The opening FP1 would see both Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz finish inside the top ten but FP2 would see a reversal with Alex & Carlos 16th & 17th. It would seem that both drivers were not able to extract the best from the soft tyre but in comparison their performances on the harder tyres were very positive. Was such a confusing day which hopefully the team can find a solution overnight.

 
 Williams Racing Austrian GP Friday Practice Review
Sainz
 

Albon

Alex Albon:
"Yes, we're a little bit confused ourselves as well. It's not feeling terrible up there, but it's not feeling fantastic. We need to understand the wind change. We know that we don't like certain winds which might have hit us in a non-favourable way. Also, we're still okay on the harder compounds. It seems like when we put on the Softs we fall back. We need to figure that out. We need to experiment a bit in FP3 and we've always been able to bounce back to a certain point. The track should be much hotter tomorrow, which means it kind of resets anyway. For tomorrow, I'm confident if we can get the tyre working, I think we should have the car and we've got the race pace, so let's see."

Sainz 
 

Carlos Sainz:
"Overall, I think our performance has been encouraging despite the time sheet after FP2. We clearly had some issues putting a lap together on the Soft tyre, but on the Medium and Hard tyres I felt very competitive out there. Compared to other teams, we are struggling to maintain the grip through the lap on the Soft tyre. We will look into it closely tonight. Our race pace seems okay, so we’ll try to find answers for the softer compound and improve as the weekend goes by."

 
Albon
 
Sainz
 
Red Bull Ring, Austria | 4.318km
 
Driver FP1 FP2
A. Albon 1:05.946 (7th)   1:05.765 (16th)
C. Sainz 1:06.017 (8th)  1:05.814 (17th)
 
Sainz