After only two races, Williams has already matched last season’s total points tally in the standings, confirming how much can change in twelve months. A year ago, the British team started the 2024 season in serious difficulty due to excessive weight.
During the winter, the engineers at Grove worked to redesign the chassis, but delays in reworking the monocoque meant that other components entered production late, increasing the car’s weight.
As a result, Williams’ entire season was compromised: initially, it had to remove the extra weight accumulated over the winter, delaying other updates. This put the Grove-based team in a position where it was always forced to chase its rivals rather than anticipate them, even in terms of technical developments.
It is no coincidence that Williams was the last team to revise the sidepod aerodynamics philosophy at the Dutch Grand Prix, significantly behind its direct competitors, who had the luxury of focusing on other car components earlier since they didn’t have mass-related issues.
Twelve months later, however, the situation has completely changed. The British team has already reached 17 points in the standings, equaling last year’s total. Of course, the disqualification of both Ferrari cars and Pierre Gasly’s Alpine in China was a big help, but it cannot be denied that Williams has started the season in good shape, fighting at the upper end of the midfield.
“It’s fantastic to have already reached the number of points we scored in 2024. But it also brings mixed feelings. First, it reminds me of how few points we got in 2024, and it also confirms how tight the grid is. Haas and Aston have a good number of points, while Racing Bulls outqualified us on both weekends, so we need to maximize every millisecond,” James Vowles said in the usual debrief video.
This result is due to two factors. On the one hand, having recovered the ground lost at the start of 2024 due to a slow beginning, the team is only now capitalizing on last year’s progress. On the other hand, there is the work done behind the scenes.
At the FW47 presentation, Team Principal James Vowles emphasized the enormous effort made to improve component quality and adapt to the changes introduced in the factory.
The 2025 car features characteristics that make it not only easier to drive—a priority repeatedly mentioned by Alex Albon for Williams—but also more versatile, capable of adapting to a wider range of tracks. This process had already begun last year but was limited by well-known issues. Beyond drivability, one of the previous cars’ main limitations was their competitiveness on only a narrow selection of tracks, particularly those with long straights or full-throttle sections, while struggling elsewhere.
“Obviously, in Williams’ history, there have been tracks where we performed well and others where we struggled more. We raced in Bahrain under quite difficult conditions, with rain and cold. We went to Australia, where track temperatures exceeded 40°C on a street circuit. And we were in Shanghai, which is a very different track from the other two.”
“We have a car that has been able to score points in both races, and even in Bahrain, we performed well, particularly in the long runs. What we have done as a team is transform the car so that it is not strong on just one type of circuit but rather competitive across all 24 tracks on the calendar,” James Vowles added.
“It seems we still have work to do, as seen in the sprint race in China, which was very front-limited, where we weren’t at the level of others. Then, for the main race, we made many changes and managed to improve the car. I don’t think there is a fundamental issue with the car’s DNA; we just need to understand more quickly how to use setup tools to put ourselves in a better position than our rivals.”
What seems to be lacking at the moment is Carlos Sainz’s performance, as he is more distanced from his teammate, especially in qualifying. The impression is that the Spaniard is still struggling to piece together the perfect lap, particularly on the softest tire compounds, as if he still needs to fine-tune certain aspects.
Beyond his best time in testing, some signs of difficulty were already visible in Sakhir, where Carlos Sainz struggled to make the C4 or the softest compounds work, an issue that also appeared in China and Australia, where the C5—an even softer compound—was used. In such a tightly packed midfield, the risk of losing several grid positions and getting stuck in traffic is high. However, the Spaniard has admitted that he is still looking for the right feeling with the FW47, a car that has nonetheless shown good potential.
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