Why Williams is happy to take a temporary hit in pursuit of long-term title goals

“The car, if I had to, I would have moved it from the wind tunnel myself,” said Williams team principal James Vowles of his 2025 contender back in April.

The season was but four races old, not even a quarter complete, and yet here was a leader in effect announcing that his team was the first to end development of its current car to prioritise resource on addressing the wide-reaching changes coming next year.

This was reported as news, of course, because it was significant. But it was also not news. Vowles told Autosport last October that he was prepared to “compromise” 2025 in order to maximise the opportunities presented by the next ruleset.

He reckoned both his drivers – including Carlos Sainz, who had not yet joined from Ferrari – were aware that 2025 would be “a struggle”.

Easy enough to say once you’ve sold the team owners on the long-term plan, slightly trickier to implement given the extent to which Formula 1 is a competitive endeavour. What’s perhaps most remarkable about Williams this season is that it hasn’t succumbed to temptation, hasn’t allowed itself to be drawn into a midfield arms race.

When it unveiled the FW47 – not a show car with a ‘new’ livery but the real thing – on a bitterly cold February morning at Silverstone, Williams wanted to demonstrate how much it had changed. From being the last to get a car ready to run – in the dog days it barely had two chassis ready for the opening round – here it was the first to launch, with Sainz lapping the track to prove this was no smoke-and-mirrors exercise.

This and ensuring the car was more competitive – last year the FW46 was overweight as well as late – were the boxes the team wanted to tick. Whether the FW47 was faster than expected out of the box is a matter of debate; Alex Albon reckoned it was, but Vowles played down such talk by issuing soothing bromides about “low-hanging fruit”, insisting “it’s about where we expected it to be”.

Although clearly an evolutionary design, the FW47 is tidier than its predecessor, more compact around the nose. Weight issues aside, the FW46’s chief vice was rear-end instability, particularly in medium-speed corners, and it was clear how much detail work had gone into reshaping the FW47’s aerodynamic profile in the visible areas around the sidepods and engine cover.

Both Albon and Sainz have had justification to voice their gripes

Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 via Getty Images

The floor was new, too, since Williams had migrated to a pushrod rather than pullrod rear suspension set-up, which it has in common with Mercedes, from which it buys the gearbox as well as the engine. This created opportunities to explore more anti-dive geometry around the rear wishbones as well as reshaping them for an aerodynamic benefit; the different spring and rocker locations made for greater volumes in the underfloor tunnels.

Vowles remained clear from the off that the decision had been taken in January to turn off the development taps in March, though of course manufacturing lead times dictated that components signed off then might not make it onto the car for several months.

One of the changes was a new floor geometry initially planned to be introduced at August’s Dutch Grand Prix, but which was fast-tracked and went on the car in Belgium in July, along with new sidepod profiles in response to overheating issues that had dogged the FW47 mid-season.

“If you want to win, there is only one way to win, and you can’t get caught in the now,” said Vowles. “That’s how it [the decision to prioritise 2026] has been completely straightforward.

“We were in a mess because we were short-termist all the way through the last 20 years. Some of it was financially driven, some of it driven by other elements” James Vowles 

“We were in a mess because we were short-termist all the way through the last 20 years. Some of it was financially driven, some of it driven by other elements, but you can’t be in this sport. It has to be investment.

“And to be clear, investment is about five years forward to get yourself into the right position of leaping [up the competitive order].”

The optics around Williams are complex. It would be easy to say that the past three seasons, to some extent, have been an exercise in expectation management from the executive floor.

Revelations that the 20,000-odd components within the car build were itemised via an Excel spreadsheet, and that various manufacturing infrastructure items were so old as to attract in-jokes about the Ming dynasty, became the foundation of the messaging that turning this venerable team around would not be the work of a moment, or even three or four seasons. 

Cynics would describe this as getting your excuses in early, and certainly there is a natural limit to how often underperformance can be rationalised by citing tired facilities and working methodologies.

Vowles is unequivocal that long-term investment and planning is only way to win

Photo by: Shu Zelin / Paddocker / NurPhoto via Getty Images

But one of the most underrated qualities of good leadership is the ability to convey the impression that everything is happening according to plan, even if some elements of the project are deviating from the course slightly.

In the Jost Capito era, Williams had a rather brittle and panic-stricken quality, as if the entire enterprise was labouring under a regime that had gravely miscalculated the fundamental carrot/stick ratio. Vowles has brought a more inscrutable game face.

Williams established itself in a relatively solid fifth place in the championship over the opening rounds, even though just one driver – Albon – was doing the bulk of the scoring. Managing Sainz’s adaptation to the car has been one of the ongoing talking points of the season.

But as other teams found performance, it could quite easily have been lured into a development race to consolidate that fifth place, for reasons of competitive pride as much as for the financial rewards.

“I really enjoy the fact we’re fifth this year,” Vowles said in Hungary, round 14 of 24. “I think it’s a fantastic element for us, for our partners, for anyone associated with us. But the goal of this team is to win more championships. 

“And you’re simply not going to do that by continuing fighting for a position or two in a constructors’ championship. So, that decision [tapering 2025 development early] was taken in January. It wasn’t even guaranteed we would do this update. It was the elements for a few bits that we did in the tunnel across January, February and a little bit into March.

“That’s it. We’re not doing anything more and won’t do anything more. And if that results in us being sixth in the championship or seventh, so be it.

“I won’t be adjudicated by where we finish in this year’s championship. It will still hurt me. But I won’t be adjudicated by that. I’ll be adjudicated by how we move this team forward year on year. 

New floor geometry and sidepod profiles were fast- tracked for the Belgian GP

Photo by: Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto via Getty Images

“But that isn’t the same up and down the grid. There’s a lot of other entities where it is about the now. And I think that’s one thing that differentiates us.”

But even a team so focused on shifting expectations towards the future has to live in the now to some extent. When Vowles took on the job of team principal at the beginning of 2023, he astutely pointed out that Williams as an organisation was one that lived from week to week; just getting to the race track had almost become an end in itself.

It was in survival mode. The process of evolving into a championship-winning team has to incorporate the lessons from the present.

At times this year, team operations have misfired at critical moments, such as in Miami when Sainz was sent out on wet-weather tyres rather than intermediates for the sprint race. For years now, standard operating procedure for every team and driver in wet conditions is to pootle around on intermediates and await a red flag.

Sharpening team operations very much falls into the category of goals that are achievable in the present or the near future, rather than being infrastructure projects that require long-term investment

If conditions are poor enough for the wet tyres to be required, a stoppage is imminent. Sainz had complained about “operational errors” – without specifying what they were – before his own mistake took him out of qualifying for the sprint race.

At Silverstone, Albon missed a potential Q3 spot as another set of mistakes developed into a spiral. In Q1 he was sent out on new tyres for a second run after Franco Colapinto had crashed heavily enough to generate a red flag.

That compromised his run plan in Q2, where he felt he was sent out too early on his second run, leading it to be compromised by traffic. From 13th on the grid he raced to eighth, but the feeling was the team had left more points on the table on a weekend when the car had good relative pace.

Sharpening team operations very much falls into the category of goals that are achievable in the present or the near future, rather than being infrastructure projects that require long-term investment.

Sharpening team operations is a goal that is quickly achievable

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

“What we’ve created is a culture within this team where there’s an instant, and it’s really quite stark and noticeable, recognition of someone’s hand going up and saying, ‘This is what I didn’t get right. This is what we’re fixing for next week,’” reckons Vowles.

‘Finger trouble’ isn’t the only matter of moment Williams has had to tackle. Just as other midfield teams were finding performance through updates and beginning to close in, Williams fell into a sequence of peculiar reliability problems that defied clear explanation.

There were cooling issues, which some observers put down to the team being too aggressive in reducing drag. Most notably these struck in Miami (where managing a water-pressure alarm with Albon’s car led to confusion with team orders, causing some rancour) and Canada (where Albon again had engine-cooling issues but Sainz didn’t, generating confusion).

Again Vowles pointed towards suboptimal infrastructure as a potential culprit, this time the simulator. In Austria the team had a double DNF owing to separate cooling issues – Albon the engine again, Sainz with brake problems that prevented him starting the formation lap and then caused a fire in the pitlane.

So both drivers have had cause to chafe. For Albon, it must be all the more frustrating because he is operating at the top of his game more consistently, as his boss acknowledges. In Hungary Vowles described him as “a completely different animal” to the one whom Red Bull found wanting against Max Verstappen in 2020. It’s not a question of higher peaks, he said, but of reaching peak performance more often.

Albon is also not shy of speaking his mind, as evinced by his complaints on the radio that “you don’t listen to me” during the Canadian GP, where he missed the optimal window to pit and was left vulnerable on ageing medium-compound tyres. As ever, of course, the timing of when these conversations are played during the broadcast means some context is lost.

Williams has both its drivers under contract for next year at least, so retention isn’t a short-term worry. What it does need to do, though, as it juggles the priorities of evolving into a cutting-edge organisation, is to ensure both pilots stay motivated.

Neither Albon nor Sainz are going to subside into ‘cruise and collect’ mode any time soon, but to deliver at their best they need a team that can exist in the now while navigating towards the future.

A sense of shared frustration for Sainz and Williams

Sainz laments “the little things popping up every weekend”; rebuilding his confidence is a must

Photo by: Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto via Getty Images

When Carlos Sainz signed for Williams he was always clear that, given the team’s recovery trajectory, his expectations were very much future-focused. But that didn’t mean he would write off 2025. What he didn’t anticipate was the scale of the challenge he would face getting to grips with the car’s baked-in performance characteristics.

From the control-system fumble that spun him out in Australia to his ongoing wrestle with the Mercedes power unit’s engine braking, Sainz has struggled to qualify well. That’s given him too much to do on race day at a time when performance convergence has made it even harder to overtake, so a pair of eighth places were his best results over the opening half of the season.

“There’s little things popping up every weekend,” Sainz said during the run-up to the British Grand Prix, a week after his Austria DNF. “And normally, those issues come up at the most stressful points of the weekend.

“There’s a shared frustration between the two of us. There’s no doubt about it that there has been fault on all sides this year. There’s been moments where the car’s quick, but we’ve either crashed or something’s happened" James Vowles

“It might be Q1, might be Q2, or it might be around the race at some point. And that’s what, in the end, prevents you from getting the result and from exploiting the maximum capacity of the car. It reflects on a low point tally and the lack of results that I wish we could achieve together.”

In turn this had an impact on the team’s ability to consolidate fifth place in the championship. And although Williams boss James Vowles has said, during his carefully plotted campaign of expectation management, that he is willing to accept slipping back to sixth in service of the long-term project, helping Sainz get the best out of the car is a job that can’t wait. 

“There’s a shared frustration between the two of us,” said Vowles in Hungary. “There’s no doubt about it that there has been fault on all sides this year. There’s been moments where the car’s quick, but we’ve either crashed or something’s happened.

Canada’s spiral of mishaps was frustrating for Sainz and his team

Photo by: Stefano Facchin / Alessio Morgese / NurPhoto via Getty Images

“We’ve had it wrong strategically. There’s been moments where he’s been caught out multiple times in qualifying by either blocking or red flags, one of which we’ve created. And he’s incredibly quick, as you can see, when everything runs smoothly. We’re just not able to get it smooth.”

The Canadian GP encapsulates what Vowles was talking about. Sainz was eliminated in Q1 when a series of mishaps spiralled. Firstly he couldn’t string together a quick enough lap on his first set of the ultra-sensitive new C6 tyres, then he lost another run – and a fresh tyre set – to a red flag brought on by Alex Albon’s engine cover blowing off and depositing carbon- fibre shards all over the track surface.

On his last attempt – blowing another set of new softs – Sainz was baulked, “through pretty much all of sector one” in his words, by Isack Hadjar, who was handed a three-place grid penalty for his sins.

Rebuilding Sainz’s confidence – making sure everything goes smoothly for F1’s self-proclaimed ‘smooth operator’ – has to be a priority for the second half of the season.

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the October 2025 issue and subscribe today. 

While neither Williams driver is going anywhere soon, they need reason to stay motivated

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