Williams has scored just 11 points so far this season, little more than one-fifth of the tally it had collected at the same stage of the championship a year ago. It is a statistic that perfectly illustrates how dramatically things have changed in just 12 months. At the start of 2025, the Grove-based team was the benchmark in Formula 1’s midfield. Today, however, it finds itself struggling to keep up.
Team Principal James Vowles has not looked for excuses, instead clearly outlining both the shortcomings in Williams’ internal processes and the main reasons behind the delays. Chief among them were the failed chassis crash tests, which slowed the entire development programme. From that moment on, the team had very few options left other than trying to compress the timeline and speed up development wherever possible. That approach, however, inevitably meant accepting compromises during both the design and manufacturing stages. Some materials allow components to be produced more quickly because they are easier to work with, but the trade-off is increased weight. That is exactly what happened at Williams: component after component, the Grove outfit ended up with a car that was significantly overweight.
A new front wing at Silverstone, with the biggest changes arriving after the summer break
The challenge is that while some components, such as wings, can be lightened according to the planned development schedule—because major updates like the front wing introduced at Silverstone require multiple new units to be manufactured—other parts have much longer production times and receive very few revisions during the season. As a result, the process becomes much more time-consuming. This is where deciding how to allocate the budget cap resources becomes absolutely crucial.
More minor upgrades will arrive between Spa-Francorchamps and Budapest before the summer break, but as James Vowles admitted, they will only be marginal improvements. Most of the team’s development budget has instead been directed towards the much larger upgrade package planned for the second half of the season.
New components will begin appearing from Zandvoort onwards, but it will be at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku that Williams is expected to unveil an almost completely redesigned car. “Slightly bigger components will arrive at Zandvoort, including some weight reduction. Then, effectively, we’ll have an almost completely new car for Baku. That’s the period we’re really looking forward to,” Vowles explained.
The Williams Team Principal has made no secret of the fact that the car due to debut in Azerbaijan will effectively be a version 2.0 of the current challenger—a major redesign of the original concept. Aston Martin made a similar decision after realising in Australia that its initial design direction had taken the team down the wrong path. The strategy was therefore straightforward: limit the number of upgrades during the first half of the season, apart from those already planned, and focus the majority of available resources on the much more significant developments scheduled for later in the championship. Interestingly, many of the incoming changes will target the same areas on both cars, highlighting a coordinated effort to address what the team considers its highest-priority weaknesses.
Since both Aston Martin and Williams experienced delays caused by failed crash tests, the two teams will homologate a second chassis, as Motorsport.com had already reported last April with the summer break identified as the target. This change will help reduce weight because both the Grove-based squad and the Silverstone team are still comfortably above the FIA’s minimum weight limit.
A package designed to restore confidence as well as performance
Reducing weight and homologating a second chassis requires considerable investment, but it is also the most effective way to recover lost performance. Reaching the minimum weight limit not only improves lap time but also gives engineers greater flexibility with setup while reducing tyre degradation, particularly through high-speed corners.
It is precisely in those conditions that Williams suffers the most from its lack of aerodynamic downforce. Combined with the excess weight, those weaknesses become even more damaging at hotter circuits, where the car is more prone to sliding.
“The best way to describe the Baku package is that it’s effectively a B-spec car. It has a new chassis and there will be other elements introduced at the same time. That will be a really significant upgrade. What we brought between Suzuka and Miami was already quite a substantial update. Then we have further weight reductions which, in terms of performance, will actually be quite significant. So it’s probably not too different from what Aston Martin has done. I don’t believe Austria and Barcelona represented the true performance level of the car. First of all, we’re overweight. When you’re overweight, the problem becomes even bigger.”
The issue, however, goes beyond weight alone. Despite the progress Williams has made in reducing mass, the team is still some way off its target, and the concerns Carlos Sainz has voiced in recent weeks are far from reassuring, even with the major Baku package on the horizon. The Spaniard has not hidden his frustration, stressing that the car also suffers from serious shortcomings in other areas.
That is precisely why the Azerbaijan upgrade will be so important. It must prove that Williams is capable of making a meaningful step forward aerodynamically as well, helping to dispel at least some of the doubts Carlos Sainz has expressed about the team’s current direction.
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