Japanese GP: Positive Friday for Atlassian Williams F1 Team

By Williams Racing
March 27 2026

The two Friday practice sessions for the 2026 Japanese GP would see the Atlassian Williams F1 Team come away with a far more positive day than they had seen in the last two race weeeknds. The team was able to complete their programme and were able to find some setup changes that helped with the performance of the car. After the two practise sessions Alex Albon would finish 8th and Carlos Sainz 13th, with Carlos not that far behind Alex. It was a day of making progress in the right direction.


Williams F1 Team Japanese GP Friday Practice Review



	Alex Albon: "That’s Friday done with. I think more of a positive day today than the last two weekends. We have to be realistic in that I think that’s probably a bit stronger than where we’re going to be tomorrow, but at least on the positive side the car is feeling better. We’ve corrected some issues and, also with setup, we’ve found something a bit more interesting in FP2. We’re chipping away and going in the right direction."

	Carlos Sainz: "That’s Friday done with. I think more of a positive day today than the last two weekends. We have to be realistic in that I think that’s probably a bit stronger than where we’re going to be tomorrow, but at least on the positive side the car is feeling better. We’ve corrected some issues and, also with setup, we’ve found something a bit more interesting in FP2. We’re chipping away and going in the right direction."

	Angelos Tsiaparas, Chief Engineer: "Overall a very productive Friday. We got through most of our programmes and there were some very interesting test items as well that arguably helped move us forward, and we made a few setup changes between FP1 and FP2 which moved us in the right direction. We are starting to understand the car a bit better now we are at the third race and how to extract the maximum potential out of it, and we will see in Qualifying whether that moves us up the competitive order."

Suzuka Circuit, Japan \| 5.807km

Driver	FP1	FP2
C. Sainz	P17 \| 1:33.383 \| 26 Laps	P13 \| 1:31.608 \| 30 Laps
A. Albon	P18 \| 1:33.697 \| 22 Laps	P8 \| 1:31.496 \| 30 Laps