This Was Meant to Be Williams’ Year. So What Went Wrong?

By Will Heys

In a previous article, I wrote about how James Vowles “consistently said he did not care about 2022-2025, but was waiting for 2026. 

“For a team principal to not care about the car in 2025, in which Carlos Sainz got two podiums for the team, gives Williams fans some long-awaited hope.”

Painful then, to report that nine rounds into the 2026 season, they sit eighth in the constructors championship.

They head an uncompetitive Aston Martin, and F1’s newcomers Audi and Cadillac.

Williams sacrificed a competitive 2025 to steal a march on the new era, and 11 points is not the dividend James Vowles had in mind.

Problems arose before a single Pirelli had even been used.

The Grove outfit missed January’s Barcelona shakedown losing valuable testing time due to production delays.

Rumours of crash test failures circulated, but the countermeasures required fed directly into Williams biggest issue: weight.

The FW48 is approximately 26kg over F1s minimum weight limit.

For context, figures reported by racingnews365 show the car is 16kg heavier than Red Bull and Aston Martin – the next worst on the grid.

James Vowles, team principle at Williams, said weight reduction must be packaged alongside aerodynamics upgrades.

But as Alex Albon said after qualifying in Shanghai, “We cannot hide behind the weight.

“There are a lot of balance issues in the car. 

We haven’t seen the downforce as well, so it’s an accumulation of things.”

The team are the only ones running pullrod front and pushrod rear suspension in 2026.

They also the highest rake on the grid.

Carlos Sainz, who moved to Williams because he believed in Vowles vision, has been visibly frustrated.

Albon meanwhile has endured a wretched run of luck.

A driver who recently surpassed Nigel Mansell’s record to become Williams’ most capped driver, has spent large chunks of the season being used as a tyre benchmark.

When you compare them to Alpine, it makes for an interesting comparison.

The French team finished last in the 2025 constructors’ and were widely written off.

Like Williams, they chose to prioritise their 2026 machine, but they arrive at this weeks British Grand Prix having scored a podium at Monaco.

For Grove, some upgrades have been brought to Silverstone with Vowles promising further small pieces and a “completely new car” by the end of the European leg in Baku.

This weekend will give us a taste of whether recovery is still possible.