Vowles explains Williams delay, says car will be ready to run before Bahrain

Team principal James Vowles (pictured above) says Williams will run its new car during a promotional day before appearing at the Bahrain test, and explained why the team missed this week’s shakedown in Barcelona.

Williams confirmed last week that it would not be present for the first track test – a private five-day shakedown available to all the teams – after encountering delays with the FW48. RACER understands Williams had not passed its final crash test relating to the nosebox while also falling behind on parts production, but team principal Vowles says there will be no further delay prior to Bahrain.

“First and foremost the car this year that we've built, just to put a number on it – it doesn't matter if I use number of hours or number of components – is about three times more complicated than anything we have put through our business beforehand,” Vowles said. “So to put that in perspective it means the amount of load going through our system is about three times what it used to be and we started falling a little bit behind and late on parts, and there's compromises you can make as a result of it.

“In addition to that, we have absolutely pushed the boundaries of what we're doing in certain areas and one of those is in certain corresponding tests that go with it, but those were only, I would say, a blip in the grand scheme of things. They are one item out of quite a few that were pushing us absolutely beyond the limit of what we can achieve in the space of time that we have available to us.

“So it's more of an output than anything else of pushing not just the boundaries of design, but the boundaries of just simply how many components can be pushed through the factory in a very short space of time.

“Last year we were sacrificing '25 for ’26 … aerodynamically we've done that but if we print the car in February last year it's way too early – you leave too much performance on the table, and more than that, you don't push this business to championship level of how late you can start offsetting everything. So what you're seeing is an outcome for making sure we're making aggressive decisions to keep as much performance on the car as possible.”

Vowles acknowledged that it has been tough to miss the Barcelona shakedown, but is confident the car will be ready to run for the two three-day tests in Bahrain that start in two weeks’ time.

“It clearly wasn't our plan [to miss Barcelona] and it's incredibly painful," he admitted, "but I do want it to be acknowledged it's the result of our determination to push the limits of performance under the new regulations.

"We are transforming here at Williams – and fast – and one of the the tasks that have been on my shoulders for a few years is making sure we transform this business at the absolute maximum rate possible. And in my experience the only way you achieve that is pushing the boundaries and limits hard and aggressively and find your limitations.

“There’s no point being just underneath the curve, or well and truly underneath the curve, if you want to transform at speed. You need to find the pain points and put them right very quickly which is exactly what we're doing.

“I'm confident in our decision to miss Barcelona and I'm confident it was the right one to prepare for the first test in Bahrain and Melbourne. I'm pleased to say that we've passed all necessary tests and we're ready to run in Bahrain and we'll carry out a promotional filming day ahead of it.”

Reports that Williams is also well above the minimum weight limit imposed by the FIA were also dismissed by Vowles, who says that won’t be known until the final test.

“There’s no knowledge of the weight until we get to Bahrain 2, in terms of understanding where it is," he said. "That's not avoiding the question but you need to get all the sensor packs off to actually understand where we are.

“I think it's a very aggressive weight target… So any anything you see out there, there's not a single person that would truly know it. It's impossible to know it because you need the car together without sensors in the right form, and that doesn't exist today.

"If we end up being over the weight target then from that point onwards it would be an aggressive program to get it off, but I think right now anything that you're seeing as murmurings in the media are murmurings. I'll come out and explain to everyone at the point where we know that – that isn't today."