Alex Albon to start Chinese Grand Prix from pit lane

For the second time in as many days, Alex Albon will start from the pit lane after Williams made changes to his FW48 in parc ferme.

Albon qualified 18th for the Chinese Grand Prix, but will start the second round of the 2026 F1 season from the pit lane.

Alex Albon to start from pit lane after Williams parc ferme breach

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Williams elected to make suspension changes to Albon’s car following Saturday’s qualifying, a breach of parc ferme regulations.

As a result, he is required to start the race from the pit lane.

Atlassian Williams F1 Team changed the setup of the suspension of Car 23 under Parc Ferme, this not being in accordance with Article B3.5.7 of the FIA F1 Regulations. Car 23 is therefore required to start the Race from pit lane under Article B3.5.7b of the FIA F1 Regulations.

The decision comes just a day after Williams made a similar call ahead of the Sprint in China.

Albon had qualified 18th for that encounter before the team elected to make suspension setup changes prior to Saturday’s 19-lap encounter.

He rose to 16th place by the chequered flag, his progress aided by the retirements of Arvid Lindblad, Valtteri Bottas, and Nico Hulkenberg.

While the FW48 is known to be overweight, Albon’s teammate, Carlos Sainz, has suggested that is not the sole cause for Williams’ current struggles.

“In a track like this, where you’re very downforce dependent and also very weight dependent and we know we lag in these two areas,” Sainz said following sprint qualifying on Friday.

“So it was always going to be a difficult weekend for us.

“It started more or less where we expected to be fighting to get out of Q1, maybe with a perfect FP1 where I could have run and we hit reliability issues again.

“Potentially, maybe you can think about fighting for Q2 but for that, we need a clean, clean weekend. And so far, it hasn’t started that way either. So many, many issues from Australia carrying over here, and we need to keep getting on top of them.

“We’re trying different things, testing different things. We will use the weekend to do so, and also to get myself up to speed. Because FP2 in Australia, I didn’t run almost. FP3, I didn’t run qualifying. I didn’t run FP1, I didn’t run.

“So you can imagine, I’m a few sessions down to the rest of the field, and to the knowledge of the car.”

Speaking after qualifying itself, the Spaniard added: “We found a bit of performance with the PU compared to yesterday, and probably since Australia it’s also a bit better. But we know our main weakness is not the PU. The PU is P1 in every session.

“We know we need to get the weight out of the car, and we need to bring upgrades, and we want to hold our promises, which is that this year was supposed to be a good one.”

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