Inside Alex Albon’s first day at Williams Racing

With a little under two months to go until we gear up for the first race of the 2022 season, Alex Albon has been getting to grips with life at his new office.

Earlier this week our No23 returned to Grove for the first time since signing back in September, and, as is normally the case when it’s your first day on the job, Alex got straight into the introductions.

“It was very exciting to meet who I’m going to be working with and who’s going to be building my car,” he said. “It’s a very international team and there are a lot of names that I haven’t quite got in my head yet, but that will come!

“Other than that, I got to meet my side of the garage in terms of engineering and through the simulator work, we learnt how we do our business – what makes me click and what makes them click.”

Away from his car crew, Alex was able to meet wider members of the Williams Racing team and the Thai-British racer soon got a sense of the scale of our operation.

“I’ve had a tour of everywhere. Some people see Williams as an intimate team, but it’s still massive!

“There’s still a lot of people here, from marketing to aero, the machine shop to accounting, it’s a big team.

“I’ve seen a lot of new faces and I’m not quite sure I’ll remember everyone’s names but it’s been great to meet everyone.”

Back at Grove for the first time since securing his seat last Autumn, Alex was given a full tour of our factory.

However, it might take a few more visits for Alex to familiarise himself with our Oxfordshire home.

“Firstly, it’s in the middle of the countryside! So I’ve got to get used to that.

“It’s a really nice place, everything’s built under one roof more or less and you can tell that everything is quite close and as a consequence, I feel like everyone knows each other here which is really nice to see.

“Everyone’s very friendly and I’ve had a good time.”

Most people hope for their first day to go nice and smooth, but unfortunately for our good friend Albono, it didn’t all go to plan.

“I already lost my car keys on the first day, but we did find them which was great.

“I thought I left them on the dinner tray so I was about to look into the garbage cans, but fortunately they were just down the side of the sofa in the simulator room, so a trip to the garbage was saved!”

Back to the serious matter at hand, that being a brand-new era both here at Williams and in Formula One.

Alex is understandably champing at the bit to get going as he returns to the grid after a season in a test and reserve capacity at Red Bull, alongside a DTM stint.

“It’s great to be back. It will be my third year in F1, but I feel like I gained a lot of experience over my time.

“I’m not this rookie coming into it now, I know what I’m doing and what I want.

“It’s great to be able to work with this team who will listen to me, we’ll listen to each other and try and get the most out of this car.”