Alex Albon faces make-or-break test against Carlos Sainz

Williams head into the 2025 F1 season boasting their strongest driver line-up for years.

Capturing Carlos Sainz’s signature after he lost his seat at Ferrari to Lewis Hamilton was a massive coup for Williams given their current position as one of F1’s backmarkers.

Williams beat the likes of Alpine and Sauber to win the race for the 30-year-old Spaniard, who will partner Alex Albon, giving the Grove-based squad a formidable driver pairing and one of the best line-ups on the grid.

It will also provide Albon, 28, with his toughest test yet at Williams. For the first time since his Red Bull days, Albon has a genuinely quick teammate in Sainz.

Until now, Albon has had a fairly comfortable ride since landing back on his feet at Williams in 2022, having been burned by a demoralising 18-month stint alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull.

Albon was promoted to Red Bull for the second half of the 2019 season but was dropped at the end of a bruising 2020 campaign in which he was out-qualified by Verstappen at every race.

The British-born Thai was demoted to Red Bull reserve driver for 2021 but secured a full-time return for the following season with Williams.

Over the following three seasons, Albon has rebuilt his reputation and been one of the most consistent drivers in the midfield, with his impressive performances even seeing him linked with a potential return to Red Bull.

Albon brushed aside Nicholas Latifi and Logan Sargeant with ease, and also largely had the measure of F1 rookie Franco Colapinto during their brief spell as teammates towards the end of 2024.

So far, Colapinto has been Albon’s nearest challenger at Williams, with the Argentine out-qualifying his more experienced teammate in Baku and Austin, but only on one occasion was he quicker over a race distance.

But after a period of being the undisputed number one driver at Williams, Albon’s position could be under threat.

With Sainz, a four-time grand prix winner, Albon knows he will have to step up as he prepares to face his biggest test since going head-to-head with Verstappen five years ago.

As a driver who ran Charles Leclerc close over their four seasons as teammates at Ferrari, there is something of an expectation that Sainz will come in and beat Albon to dethrone him as Williams’ de-facto team leader.

Williams team principal James Vowles has already been impressed by Sainz’s worth ethic and how he has adapted to the team.

"You could see from the moment he jumped in the car in Abu Dhabi, his mind switched. This is where he wants to be, this is what he wants to do, he's part of our success story. He's fitting in perfectly,” Vowles recently told Autosport.

"He's a brilliant personality who, with him, brings not only race-winning pedigree but this want and desire for Williams to be successful.

"His contributions – as are Alex's as well – are absolutely key for driving this team forward, because it's now into a level of detail where you're starting to chase milliseconds as opposed to the big-ticket items we work for.

"Already in the space of just a few weeks, real positive momentum from ideas, concepts, how we can change, how we can move forward, is coming."

It feels as though this could potentially go one of two ways for Albon’s career.

If Albon is able to match Sainz in speed and race craft his stock will only further rise, helping him prove once and for all just how good he is.

On the other hand, should he be comprehensively beaten, the reputation he has worked so hard to restore could be speedily shattered.

Recent seasons have underlined that both Albon and Sainz are two of the most underrated drivers in F1.

While the bigger picture at Williams is about moving up the grid ahead of F1’s regulation overhaul in 2026, how Albon and Sainz match up promises to be one of the most intriguing subplots of 2025.