The 2026 Formula 1 season was supposed to be the year that the Atlassian Williams F1 Team finally broke back into the top half of the grid.
After years of falling behind the competition, the Grove-based outfit is trying to recapture the success it had through the 1980s and 1990s.
When he took the helm in 2023, team principal James Vowles outlined a clear plan to effectively sacrifice the 2024 and 2025 seasons to focus resources on developing for 2026.
A new set of regulations always brings opportunities in F1, but as Carlos Sainz admitted, it has become a “bit of an eye-opener” of a season for Williams.
Its 2026 car arrived overweight in Melbourne and underperformed. Neither Sainz nor Alex Albon has reached Q3 yet, and they have only scored 11 points collectively at the halfway point of the season.
“There’s an amount of performance we expected which is not translating on track, simple as that. We are being out-developed by others,” said Vowles when speaking on Sky Sports.
“That’s a [result of a] whole mixture of things – it’s never one thing, but definitely an element of that is we’re not delivering on things we should, and that needs to be really dug into because there’s an impact on the long term.”
Although the team has invested more in product lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning, Vowles admitted as early as Miami that Williams had a “messy winter” due to problems building its first car from start to finish.
Elaborating on their problems, Vowles believes much of their issues in 2026 stemmed from the challenge of producing a car under the most complex set of regulations ever seen in F1.
“The car we produced is the most complex we’ve ever produced. It doesn’t matter whether I use the number of parts; it’s about two times that number,” said Vowles.
“That meant all of it was about one and a half to two times more complex, and it didn’t go smoothly through much of that process.”
From there it all snowballed. The enforced break brought on by the cancellations of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia gave them a bit of leeway to make improvements, but the timeline was always getting back on track after the summer break.
Now Williams is also taking a new approach to make way for 2027, prompted by the newly agreed aerodynamic regulation changes for next season to help with adjustments to the power units.
“The rules are actually changing aerodynamically for next year; and they’re fairly significant. There are changes around the rear wing and in some areas of the floor,” said Vowles.
“As a result of that, it isn’t really as much of a carryover as I think everyone would like in that circumstance, but it’s for good reason. We’ve already said we’re doing a new chassis; the purpose is to cover part of next year’s chassis allocation.
“It’s a very different way of doing chassis. A very different way of digging into the roots and getting to the car’s performance. That is what this year will turn into, and it’s about how we make sure that everything we are doing for our future is correct in the chassis performance part.”
For drivers Sainz and Albon, it means waiting longer for things to improve than they were initially sold on the idea in 2024.
“There’s no secret that my expectations, or my timeline of when I can win again, have been delayed a year or two,” said Sainz.
“I had a timeframe I was willing to accept to get this team back into a winning position, and that timeline will be longer than expected.”
Sainz was in high demand in 2024 when Ferrari announced it would be letting him go in favour of Lewis Hamilton, with a drive at Audi also on the table.
“There’s no secret that my expectations, or my timeline of when I can win again, have been delayed a year or two”
Carlos Sainz, Williams F1 driver
Although it might seem he would look elsewhere given Williams’ current performance, he has indicated he is willing to see it through its troubles, given its behind-the-scenes work.
“I see what the team is investing in the future. This still gives me confidence and motivation that we are going in the right direction. It is just that this year’s car is underperforming and has fallen short of our expectations,” said Sainz.
“I expected that, if anything, with more time to develop the 2026 car and a new set of regulations, we could either stay where we were or take a small step forward.
“Time has proven to me that it’s been obviously the opposite or the other way round, and that as a team we are much farther away from the top than what we thought we were at the end of 25, so it’s definitely been a character-building year for the whole team.”
It might not be the worst start to the season for Williams, but how they successfully turn things around in 2027 will be a key test of whether the changes made under Vowles are making an impact.
