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Williams team principal James Vowles has never overstated what he believes his team can achieve, but the 2026 Formula 1 season could see the Grove-based outfit return to their former glories.
James Vowles was reticent to expect too much last year, with so much of Williams’ resources being poured into the upcoming regulation changes.
What followed was Williams’ best campaign since 2016, scoring two podiums thanks to Carlos Sainz.
His teammate, Alex Albon, was the best of the rest in the drivers’ championship, and it’s hard to argue that they don’t have the strongest driver pairing in F1’s midfield.
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Williams have had to make sacrifices over the years to try and maximise their potential, with the facilities that Vowles’ team are using at the factory not at the same standard as the likes of Aston Martin or Mercedes.
However, that Mercedes power unit could be crucial to Williams and might make them an even more competitive force next season.
Vowles has played down the money spent by Williams on their new car, and instead highlighted one improvement the team have made with ‘zero cost’.
James Vowles says improvements in Williams’ work practices have had ‘zero cost’
Vowles was interviewed by Autosport in the lead-up to the 2026 campaign and said: “We’ve only put a couple of weeks of aerodynamic development into the 2025 car during the year.
“But what we’ve been working on instead is: ‘Do we have the right balance? Do we have the right way of working the tyres? Do we have the right way of communicating with the drivers? Do we have the right differential tools?
“All those are zero cost. They’re just about using a product in a different way to what we had before.
Where do YOU think Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon are going to finish in the 2026 drivers’ championship!
“Quite a bit of performance that was locked away has been coming out of that, and that’s what I’ve been focused on.
“It’s what I like about our sport. You constrain yourself in one way by not putting any more development in this car, but I give you the freedom every weekend to go out there and try something different.
“As long as it is backed up by logic and has a data-driven mechanism behind it, then I’m fine to support it and try it.
“And that’s what we’ve been doing, and it’s working. You could see across the year how, despite the car not changing, we were moving forward.”
READ MORE: All to know about Williams Racing from team principal to Mercedes ties
Williams miss out on adding Gianpiero Lambiase to their ranks for 2026
Williams are at the heart of Great Britain’s Motorsport Valley, making them a very attractive prospect for anybody working in Formula 1 if they want to switch teams.
Albon didn’t have much further to travel when he swapped Milton Keynes for Grove in 2022, and another key member of staff Williams wanted to pick up from Red Bull was Gianpiero Lambiase.
Max Verstappen’s race engineer has one of the most recognisable voices in F1 due to his frequent and often humorous conversations with the four-time world champion over the team radio.
Lambiase held talks with Williams and Aston Martin over a winter break switch, but has instead decided to commit his future to Red Bull.
Vowles knows he can’t spend inordinate amounts of money to keep up with some of their rivals, even if the cost cap negates some of that disparity.
It’s why he’s so keen to invest in expertise, which is where Lambiase would have come in, and Sainz’s impressive feedback is even more crucial to a team like Williams.
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