‘Is the car behind in control?’ F1 2026 rules spark Alex Albon’s concern

Alexander Albon has weighed in on the impact of Formula 1’s 2026 regulations, which he said were discussed in the drivers’ briefing.

Closing speed between cars deploying energy and others harvesting it has been a hot topic since pre-season testing and was thrust under the spotlight by Oliver Bearman’s hefty Suzuka crash, when the young Briton lost control of his Haas car at 308km/h when approaching Franco Colapinto’s Alpine, which was travelling 45km/h slower.

According to Albon, this is also linked to active aerodynamics and the way Straight Mode (formerly known as SLM, which stood for Straightline Mode) and Corner Mode operate on different cars.

Furthermore, it has been emerging that drivers don’t have full control on their cars. “I didn't even want to overtake Lewis [Hamilton]. It's just that my battery deploys, I don't want it to deploy, but I can't control it,” Lando Norris revealed at the end of the Japanese Grand Prix.

As a result, Albon confesses to sometimes worrying that a rogue car behind him might cause an incident.

“We actually talked about that in the drivers' briefing, just about the closing speeds and defending and moving and all these kinds of things,” the Williams driver commented. “It feels really awkward now, because you want to defend but you're sometimes worried that the car is behind – if they're in control of their car.

“Maybe we just need to make SLM itself a bit more stable or less powerful or something like that. More like a regular DRS that you can control quite easily. I don't know.”

Alexander Albon, Williams

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

Regardless, Albon experienced a tough weekend at Suzuka, where he was eliminated in Q1 before the struggling Williams team turned his race into “a bit of a test session” – which involved energy deployment.

“We wanted to test a few things with the front wing, and so we wanted to map some of the car in this five-week break so we could understand it a bit better and go through some of the data,” the Thai driver explained. “So we proceeded to do so. I think points were not on the cards today.  

“We actually had quite a nice test plan in place. That meeting was basically, we do 10 laps like this, five laps like this, five laps like this, five laps like this, 10 laps like this, and we still had the same issue.

“I think in some parts of the races it was working well and I could stay in the pack, and then if you look at my race plot and you see me drop back, it's where I have the issues. At that point we thought, honestly, we're not going to fix it here so we might as well turn it into a test session.”

Williams currently lies ninth in the constructors’ championship with two points, leading Cadillac and Aston Martin only, with Audi ahead on countback.