How Williams aims to reach "a sensible position" in F1 2026 after double-score Miami

Not including sprint races, Williams had been without a double points finish in Formula 1 since last year's Monaco Grand Prix. Over 11 months had passed until it got both cars into the top 10 once more in this year's Miami encounter.

This little statistic is surprising for two reasons: one, that this year's car hadn't looked particularly competitive until the first of three visits to the United States, and two, last year's car was its most competitive in years. Questionable form had swung from Carlos Sainz at the end of the season's middle stages and towards Alex Albon among the flyaways, restricting both to simultaneous grand prix points finishes on just five occasions.

Given its very public declaration that it had put its entire wager on 2026 and beyond, Williams had hoped at the bare minimum to continue its 2025 form. To a degree, it did - it finished 13th and 16th in last year's Abu Dhabi finale, suggesting that its wish to pick up from where it had left off was granted by a genie who only deals in literal terms.

A slow start to the year, exacerbated by its absence from the Barcelona shakedown, indicated that the team had fallen short of its expectations. The FW48 was overweight, likely a result of the chassis requiring additional reinforcement to pass the crash tests needed for homologation.

Regardless, Williams came out of the impromptu spring break as one of the bigger development winners. Per Sainz, it arrived with an upgrade package that was supposed to be introduced in Melbourne, yet was delayed given the early-season troubles. 

"Now it's in the car, it's performing at least at the level of the midfield cars," Sainz reckoned, after finishing ninth ahead of Albon. "We know we still have a lot of weight to shed off the car. When you look at that, it's positive. I think the team has done a great effort over the last few weeks to bring this."

Much of the Miami update was aerodynamic in nature: it came with a new floor, bodywork, and some changes around the rear suspension fairings. Although weight is an issue, and the circa 20-25kg that the FW48 has in excess is likely worth around 0.7-0.8 seconds per lap, the lack of downforce made up the rest of the time loss. These additions have given Williams a chance to address some of that deficit. 

Williams' key players are hoping the sun keeps shining after its winter of discontent

Photo by: Clive Mason / Getty Images

"It was a really, really messy winter," Vowles mused in Miami. "And the break gave us an opportunity to reset, take a breath, catch up, form a plan for not just Miami, but really what we're doing now across everywhere up until the end of the season to put ourselves back into a sensible position fundamentally.

"And I'm proud of the work that the team did. There was every area basically working at maximum capacity. And that's despite a difficult winter where people were putting in big, big hours.

"However, that the gap is so large from where we are to the front that I'm sure we've made a small step into that. But it is a small step. We need to keep doing that across the number of races in the future in order to make a tangible difference."

Vowles added that the team has now accounted for all of the extra weight in its at-base engineering projects, which will be trickled out in further upgrades across the season. Some of that will be introduced in Montreal to maintain the weight-shedding efforts, and also in an effort to counter prospective updates from Audi and Haas in Canada. 

Williams has set a target of streamlining its car to 10kg below the weight limit after the summer break, at which point it hopes it can start to look at 2027; there, the target will be to ensure that it opens next season in much better shape.

"For me [the hope is] as we get to where we finish developing the car, which will be after the August break, that the car is sensibly back to being the top of the midfield, with everything in a sensible position, and then building on next year’s car," Vowles explained. 

"The engineering that’s been done over the last five weeks is all the weight is removed from the car - it’s not delivered yet, but the engineering work is complete - plus another 10 kilos on top of that. That’s a sensible step. 

"Pit stops are back to being in the top three, top four, there’s 150 pit stops completed, and that we bring aerodynamic performance that translates on track."

Miami updates brought Williams back into the points - but the team knows it must keep progressing

Photo by: Ryan Pierse / Getty Images

The target of being above the midfield will be tough, especially as it appears that Alpine is scampering away from the pack. Like 2025, it'll also be at the behest of circuits; the likes of Williams, Racing Bulls, Aston Martin, Haas, and Sauber seemed to take turns with the lower reaches of the top 10 depending on the nature of the tracks.

To transcend that and join Alpine in the no-man's-land between the top four and the midfield pack will be a considerable challenge. It's one thing to match your immediate rivals' development curves, it's quite another to transcend it - especially if you're starting on the back foot.

That's not to say it's impossible: just ask McLaren how it managed to turn its season upside down in 2023.

Grove gets more technical reinforcements

Even with its difficult start to 2026, Williams has enough cachet to lure some of F1's brightest and best to Grove; its history speaks for itself and, while Vowles' regeneration efforts have hit a few stumbling blocks this year, the team is still confident that it can maintain course and return to the front.

Two of those signings have come from Mercedes; Dan Milner had left Brackley a few months ago to take up the position of chief engineer of vehicle technology, and will oversee much of the simulation-to-car development structure. Furthermore, Vowles announced in Miami that Claire Simpson had also left Mercedes to join Williams as its head of aerodynamic development, where she'll add to the existing infrastructure led by Adam Kenyon and Juan Molina.

For Vowles, these are important reinforcements; his efforts to reform the team over the past three years have leaned on his experience of Mercedes' operations, and adding new staff already familiar with the systems in place should ensure they slot neatly into place.

It doesn't hurt that both were involved in the development of F1's current championship-leading machinery...