Williams missed test to be ‘competitive’ – Vowles

Feb.4 (GMM) Williams team boss James Vowles has defended the decision to miss the entire Barcelona shakedown week, insisting delaying the FW48 was painful but necessary as the team prioritises competitiveness.

Speaking to AFP on the day Williams unveiled its 2026 livery using rendered images rather than a physical launch car, Vowles admitted the call not to run in Spain was among the hardest he has made since taking charge at Grove.

“One of the toughest decisions of my career was not going to Barcelona,” said Vowles. “But it was the right decision. We could have had a car there, but it wouldn’t have been competitive.”

Williams had originally planned a real-world launch before ongoing delays forced a virtual reveal. Instead of on-track running, the car was tested on simulator rigs.

Vowles acknowledged the situation represented another difficult winter for the rebuilding team, but said the underlying philosophy remained sound.

“The decisions made in 2025 were the right ones – investing upstream for 2026,” he explained. “Have we made a significant leap from 2025 to 2026? Absolutely. Some elements of the car are truly impressive. Are we at championship level today? No.”

He was equally clear about tempering expectations even for next year.

“World champion in 2027 is not realistic,” Vowles said bluntly.

Instead, Williams’ target remains consolidation at the top of the midfield.

“P5 is the base level I want us to be at,” he said, referring to the team’s 2025 constructors’ finish. “But it’s exponentially harder to go from P5 to P4, and even harder again to P3, P2, P1. The path to P2 or P1 simply isn’t planned for 2026. We still have work to do.”

Vowles also stressed that driver continuity underpins the long-term plan, noting that Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz are committed beyond a single season.

“They’ve signed for more than a year because they want to be part of a project,” he said. “That was an agreement I made with them.”

Reflecting on the delays, Vowles described the episode as a painful but necessary exposure of internal weaknesses.

“I wish we hadn’t had to confront it so aggressively to discover all the weaknesses,” he admitted. “But if we’d known the limitations of our processes – how we communicate, how we move pieces within the company – we would have changed the programme earlier.”

“What pleases me, in a strange way, is that if you avoid a problem, it doesn’t hurt enough to dig deep and fix it. This won’t happen again. You have to let the pain of failure drive change.”

Despite missing Barcelona, Vowles believes Williams can still arrive in Bahrain prepared, thanks to extensive simulator and Virtual Track Test (VTT) work.

“I would have preferred to be in Barcelona,” he said. “We wanted to get ahead. We didn’t achieve that. But our VTT testing was a success, and the work we did with Carlos and Alex in the simulator while others were running in Spain was extremely valuable.”

Williams’ long-standing integration with Mercedes remains a key strength, particularly as multiple teams adapt to new power units and gearboxes under the 2026 regulations.

“We’re fortunate Mercedes has enough drivers and teams running their package,” Vowles explained. “We’re receiving a lot of information on both the power unit and the gearbox, which allows us to get ahead for Bahrain.”

Assessing the early pecking order from afar, Vowles was impressed by several rivals.

“Red Bull were very impressive, especially on the power unit side,” he said. “To build a power unit from scratch and have it be that reliable is remarkable. Ferrari’s consistency is also impressive, even if ultimate pace is unclear. Mercedes, as always, are very good at adapting to regulation changes.”

He noted that Williams’ situation differs from fellow Mercedes customers, including Alpine, which has only recently switched to the same power unit and gearbox arrangement.

“I think Alpine’s learning curve is steeper than ours,” Vowles said. “We’ve been integrated with Mercedes for a very long time, and we also use their gearbox, which sets us apart from McLaren. That could give us an advantage.”

Still, he cautioned against drawing firm conclusions without track data.

“At this moment, nobody knows the hierarchy – and I really mean nobody,” Vowles said. “Especially us, because we haven’t been on track.”

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