Williams Racing: Rise of the fallen F1 giants

Having finished the 2017 season in fifth place with 83 points, Williams Racing have floundered since, finishing last in the Constructors’ Championship in four of the last seven years. This season, however, they sit fifth in the championship standings after seven races.

There were also reports emerging towards the end of April suggesting that Williams would be the first team to switch off wind tunnel development of their 2025 machinery to fully focus on the 2026 challenger. Despite this being their best start to a season since 2015, they are right to stick to their guns and abandon it if they are serious about their 2026 aspirations.

The Grove-based outfit have an experienced Team Principal in James Vowles, two experienced drivers in Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz, and an ever-growing list of quality personnel coming on board to restore this once-storied team to former glory. But there is a certain ceiling to their current car, the FW47, which makes it all the more important for them to focus on the 2026 project.

The man behind the revival

Private investment firm Dorilton Capital acquired Williams Racing in August 2020, and Jost Capito took over as the team’s CEO in February 2021. The plan was for him to stay for two or three years, but after two tough seasons (yielding a combined 31 points) the 64-year-old stepped down in December 2022 along with technical director François-Xavier Demaison.

Someone needed to build a new era at Williams — a storied team with more than 800 Grands Prix, nine Constructors’ titles, and seven Drivers’ Championships under their belt. And they went with someone they had once rejected due to his mathematics background.

From completing his master’s in engineering after receiving rejection letters from every team on the F1 grid, getting signed by the Brackley-based British American Racing (BAR) team in 2001, winning eight Constructors’ titles with Mercedes, to becoming the Team Principal of Williams Racing — James Vowles’ story is marked by repeated revivals.

Having joined BAR in 2001, Vowles remained with them for the next 21 years, working through different eras and guises as the team morphed from BAR into Honda Racing four years after his arrival, then Brawn GP in 2009, and finally Mercedes in 2010. Each makeover brought new management and a new approach.

In short, Vowles helped rebuild the team time and again.

Ever since joining the Williams project, Vowles has consistently emphasised the long-term goal, stating in interviews that with much of the Williams infrastructure outdated by 15–20 years, it would take five to six years to lay strong enough foundations for a title challenge.

Now in his third full season with Williams, Vowles has the team sitting at the top of the midfield — even pouncing on underperforming giants — despite most of their resources being directed towards the 2026 regulation changes.

Some problems too big to fix

The Williams cars have suffered from a balance problem throughout the ground-effect era, which the team have failed to mitigate as well as the others, especially when compared to the frontrunners. This has continued in 2025, despite Williams taking a good step forward with their car and sitting fifth in the Constructors’ standings with 51 points from seven races.

Despite all the positives, the FW47 still struggles with entry instability into corners, where brake and steering lock have to be applied together. This is something Alex Albon noted very early in his time with the team, and the issue has prevailed even after Carlos Sainz’s arrival from Ferrari.

While Albon has become more accepting of the issue and has been driving around it, Sainz, whose driving style from his time at Ferrari has been caught out by the Williams car’s behaviour, has identified it as a significant thing holding his new team back from making further progress.

Compared to last year, Williams feel progress has been made on corner entry, but the problem has simply moved further around the corner. Both Vowles and the drivers feel that the problem has been mitigated to some extent by getting the different aerodynamic, vehicle dynamics, and car concept parts to work more cohesively with the car’s development.

However, Sainz thinks Williams can make further strides this season if they can figure out how to resolve the problem. This will be relevant for future cars too, but Vowles believes the problem will not be fully sorted with this year’s car. 

Vowles believes that some of the answers to mitigating their balance situation require taking a different direction from the one they need to take for the future. Thus, Williams feel it’s not worth investing their time in trying to fix something that can’t guarantee them progress in the long run. This means both Sainz and Albon need to work with what Williams can offer for now. Their strong start to the season in a very tight midfield is sufficient, and being consistently the second-quickest midfield team — or joint first — has proved to be the difference.

The FW47 is not a car drastically better than its predecessor, but it has benefited from some tweaks. Last year, Williams made big conceptual changes to some of the elements of their car-building process, which caused a problematic winter and resulted in the 2024 car being overweight, underdeveloped, and short on spares at the start of the season. Although the situation improved through the year, Williams were still often treading water last season. This year, though, they have finally been able to cash in on the development work from last year as well as the infrastructural and cultural changes behind the scenes.

What to expect from the rest of the season?

The Imola Grand Prix was going to be a huge litmus test for the Grove-based outfit, which the team passed with flying colours. Despite being only one of two teams (alongside Sauber) not to bring any new upgrades to Imola, Williams saw both Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz finish well inside the top ten.

The most impressive thing at Imola was the consistency and ease with which both Albon and Sainz maintained their race pace compared to the frontrunners, while keeping the chasing pack at bay. Teams in and around them in the championship — like Alpine, Racing Bulls, Aston Martin, and Haas — had no answer to their pace, despite having brought major upgrades for the European leg.

However, it has been well documented that Williams are not bringing in any more upgrades for their FW47 this season. With 17 rounds remaining, there’s enough time for the chasing pack to catch up to Williams, but with two quality drivers like Albon and Sainz, the British outfit have — after a long time — a driver pairing that can extract every bit of performance from their car.

Williams are already 31 points clear of the team in sixth, so maximising the first half of the season will be key for them in order to keep hold of their fifth place before their advantage fades away towards the back end of the season.