Albon has recently been linked with a return to Red Bull Racing or the Mercedes seat vacated by Lewis Hamilton.

It follows a strong campaign in which he led Williams to seventh place in the constructors’ championship, scoring all bar one of the team’s 27 points.

But while there were few headline results, the Thai-licensed driver delivered performances above the expectation.

In Canada, he succeeded in fending off the midfield pack for much of the race and proved especially rapid in the lead-up to the British Grand Prix.

“He’s fiercely competitive,” the Williams boss told Speedcafe of Albon’s personality.

“He’s actually very much two different characters. If you spoke to him right now, you’d think ‘loveliest man I ever met that’s driven a fast car’.

“Put the helmet on and actually you see a little bit more of this aggressive create that pops out and takes no prisoners.

“That’s what I like about him. He’s got a maturity that’s really come into its own.”

Vowles believes Albon grew as a driver with Williams in 2023, and is now more confident of himself than he was a year ago.

“The Alex I knew right at the beginning when I first joined was a little restrained in some of his actions, a little bit, perhaps, not as vocal as he could have been, perhaps not as confident in his abilitry as he could have been as well,” he reasoned.

“The Alex at the end of the year is one that really has come out of his shell, and I’ve described him as a champion.

“I’ve had the fortune to work with a number of champions in my time. There are drives [in 2023] that are on that level.

“I’m pleased, incredibly pleased he’s here, and obviously he’s become the backbone of why we’ve had success [in 2023].”

Understood to be out of contract at the end of the coming season, Albon has slotted into the role of team leader at Williams well.

It’s a squad in the midst of a long-term rebuilding programme, a job Vowles has been tasked with heading up.

The challenge will be retaining the 27-year-old.

More than half the grid is out of contract at the end of the season, raising the prospect of a more competitive operation swooping in for Albon’s services.

Red Bull Racing has already been touted a a potential berth, with some suggesting a contract has even been tabled..

Should his stock continue to rise, those opportunities are only likely to become more difficult to resist.

“What I need from him at the moment is, he’ll know what makes him quicker and what makes the team quicker, and he neds to be demanding,” Vowles said of his expectations of Albon over the coming year.

“He needs to be demanding and he needs to action those demands as well as a result of it.

“That, plus the continuation of the build that I’ve seen before.

“I think he’s now very confident in who he is and with the direction of travel that he’s going in.

“But let’s build up around it because the performance isn’t ever one driver, it’s your entire engineering team working with you to extract every millisecond.

“I think we have more potential there.”