(Motorsport-Total.com) – Williams has not yet written off the 2026 Formula 1 season. After James Vowles had previously announced that his team would bring a B-version of the FW48 after the summer break, he has now confirmed once again that the Williams will be “almost a completely new car” in a few months.
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At Sky, Vowles explained during the Spielberg race weekend that there will already be a somewhat larger update package for the car at the next Grand Prix in Silverstone. Further “small parts” are then to follow before the summer break in Spa and Budapest.
At the first race after the break in Zandvoort, there is supposed to be another upgrade that also reduces the weight of the FW48, according to Vowles, and by the Grand Prix in Baku at the end of September, the car will no longer have much in common with the current car, according to the team principal.
The question, however, is how good the revamped Williams will really be. Because at the last race in Spielberg, the team found itself at the very end of the midfield. Only Cadillac and Aston Martin could be beaten in the double Q1 exit in qualifying.
And although Williams was already hopeless the previous weekend in Barcelona, Vowles firmly believes that his racing team can still turn things around in 2026. Because compared to the start of the season, they have already taken “positive steps,” he emphasizes.
Vowles confident: Can close the gap
In fact, Williams had a better phase in Miami, Canada, and Monaco, where they scored points in three races in a row. Vowles explains the setback since Barcelona partly by the fact that other teams have recently brought updates, while the new parts for Williams are still to come.
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“I am impressed by how fiercely contested the field is nowadays,” he says, praising among other things the high development pace of the Racing Bulls. The Red Bull sister team already brought both cars into the points in Barcelona and recently led the midfield in Spielberg.
At the same time, Vowles also emphasizes that it is Williams’ goal to close the current gap to the Racing Bulls and all other midfield teams. “I consider that realistic given our development pace,” the team principal says surprisingly optimistically.
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His explanation: “I don’t think many others will achieve a performance increase of the magnitude we are planning by this point [after the summer break].” Or in other words: Williams will, in his opinion, bring more performance to the car in the coming weeks than almost all other teams.
Although the competitors are also further developing their cars, Vowles therefore assumes that with better development, Williams will succeed in closing the gap. “Of course, this is not yet what we want to achieve,” he says about the current season progress.
But he sees a good chance that Williams will be fighting much further forward in the field again after the summer break.
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