Williams recovers from brutal 2026 F1 winter, but losses remain
NXTbets Pro | Published On: October 7, 2026
Williams winter
Williams spent the opening months of its 2026 Formula 1 campaign paying for a choice it made with 2027 in mind. Team principal James Vowles warned Williams drivers Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon twice before the season that the team was in trouble with the car it had built. Williams had deliberately given up aerodynamic performance in the 2026 machine so it could push cost-cap resources toward the foundations for 2027, and the early results were rough. The team missed the first pre-season test and the Barcelona pre-season shakedown. Vowles said the 2026 car was expected to be too heavy, and the FW48 started the year 28 kg overweight. He called the winter “disastrous” and said he accepts responsibility for the mistakes. The picture he painted was blunt. Williams had taken a major step away from short-term pace, then failed to execute the preparation well enough to protect the season that followed. That left the team chasing weight, balance and speed from the start, with little margin to recover once the campaign was under way. The result was a car that forced the team to spend the year solving a problem it had hoped would never become so severe.
Sainz Albon support
Sainz and Albon did not turn away when the scale of the problem became clear. Vowles said both drivers responded with support and asked how they could help the team. They then flew to the U.K. to spend time with the Williams squad during a difficult stretch, a visit Vowles said mattered for morale. That support gave the team a lift at a point when the winter work had already gone off track and the season had begun under pressure. It also showed how closely the drivers stayed tied to the project, even as the car lagged behind the level Williams needed. Their decision to go to the factory was a direct sign that the group inside the garage and the group back at base were dealing with the same reality, a slow start that left no easy way out. Vowles framed that visit as important because it helped steady the room when the tone around the program could have gone the other way. The response from Sainz and Albon did not erase the early problems, but it did give Williams something valuable in a period where results were thin and confidence was harder to find.
Baku recovery
Williams finally found a path forward when it introduced a brand-new chassis at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and backed it with an upgrade package in Baku. That step delivered the team’s best qualifying result of the season, with Sainz taking ninth, and it helped Williams score its first point since Monaco. Vowles said the car is now carrying ballast, which shows the weight problem has been fixed. He also said it was too late in the season to recover all of the performance the team had lost earlier in the year. That left Williams with clear progress, but also a clear limit on what the turnaround could produce in 2026. The results back that up. Williams sat ninth in the Constructors’ Championship with 12 points after finishing fifth the previous year, a drop that reflected how much ground the team had given away before the Baku update could land. Even so, Vowles pointed to the 2027 effort as the real next step. The 2027 chassis is already being built and should reduce the team’s workload in the next off-season. He said software and process changes, along with the arrival of Piers Thynne, will make a significant difference. Vowles said the full impact of that development work will not be clear until the first race of 2027, but he is confident Williams will not repeat the “disaster” of its 2026 Formula 1 campaign.
