Williams update finds progress, but Vowles warns: ‘It’s not enough’

Williams arrived in Baku with a sizeable question hanging over its latest development push: could its heavily revised FW48 finally begin to drag the team back towards the midfield?

After Thursday's first taste of the package, team principal James Vowles was encouraged – but hardly ready to declare mission accomplished.

The Grove outfit has endured a brutal first season under Formula 1's sweeping 2026 regulations. Having finished fifth in last year's constructors' championship, Williams has instead slumped to ninth this year, collecting just 11 points from the opening 14 rounds and failing to score since Monaco.

An overweight car has been one of the team's central problems, leaving Williams playing catch-up while rivals moved further ahead.

The Baku upgrade therefore carries significance beyond a single weekend, with the package centred around a lighter chassis and aerodynamic revisions designed to address some of the FW48's shortcomings.

Thursday's running offered some encouragement, although the timesheets were hardly transformed.

Better, but hardly a breakthrough

Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon put their upgraded cars 12th and 13th respectively in FP1, before slipping to 16th and 17th in the second session.

For Vowles, however, the first verdict was less about chasing pace and more about establishing a foundation for the work still to come.

“It’s more about building for next year and beyond," Vowles told F1TV.

"It’s not where I would ever want it to be, or the drivers want it to be, but it is still fantastic work by the team to really redevelop an entirely new chassis in-season. So, a step in the right direction, but not enough.

“There’s pride, because it’s been a difficult, difficult start to the year and we’re starting to get our head above water. But we’ve got two hungry drivers and a hungry team that want so much more. For them right now, it was, ‘Yep, slightly better. Let’s keep moving.’”

That assessment neatly captures Williams' predicament. The team has finally managed to introduce a major correction to its car, but the deficit created during the opening part of the campaign cannot be erased by one upgrade.

And Vowles believes there could still be more performance hidden within the package as Williams learns how to extract its potential.

“Whenever you run a new aero package like this, I assure you, right now the engineers will be just in the minutiae of detail – and that’s what they should be doing – but you don’t get it right first time," he said.

"Just even when you position the ride height of the car, the balance of the car, so there’ll be a little bit more to come from that relative to other teams that have that package. Let’s see, but it’s not enough to be far enough ahead to guarantee points.”

Sainz senses a change

While the results remained modest, Sainz's first impressions provided Williams with at least one reason for optimism.

The Spaniard acknowledged that the revised FW48 felt more convincing and that the team's deficit to the midfield appeared to have narrowed. Given the amount of ground Williams has been attempting to recover, simply closing the gap represents a meaningful first step.

”In general I feel a bit better with the car, and it seems like we are a bit closer to the midfield," commented Sainz.

"The laps that I’ve done have been relatively competitive, given how important track time is here, and normally you always feel like you’re playing catch-up.

"For how much catch-up I’m playing, I feel like I’m in a good place now. We need to do the right steps going into tomorrow."

• Read also: Chadwick savours ‘best day of my life’ after Williams F1 test

That final sentence may be the most appropriate description of Williams' situation. The upgrade has not suddenly turned the FW48 into a points-scoring machine, and Vowles is making no attempt to disguise that reality.

But after months of frustration, Williams at least appears to have found evidence that its latest direction is taking the car somewhere better.

For a team desperate to recover from its 2026 misfire, that may be modest progress — but right now, modest progress is precisely what Williams needs.

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via X and Facebook