Vowles looks ahead with calm: “No doubts about how to proceed”

Williams’ absence in Barcelona The 2026 world championship will kick off in early March in Australia, but Williams’ pre-season period hasn’t been one of the brightest for the English team; the Grove manufacturer, thanks to the delays in the development of the FW48, was in fact the only one not to present itself in the Barcelona Shakedown, with the first tests postponed to the Sakhir tests, which will begin tomorrow and continue until Friday. Vowles’ calm In Bahrain, to tell the truth, Williams has already started its program today, but with the holding of a filming day. While waiting for the actual tests, Team Principal James Vowles focused on the immediate future, expressing no particular concerns: “I have no doubts about how to proceed from here onwards – he explained in an interview reported on the official F1 website – however strange it may seem, as an organization we have to deal with these types of events. I wish they hadn’t been so extreme, but we have to deal with them to ensure we completely eliminate every aspect of our business that is simply not at the right level and not fit for purpose, and that we learn very quickly from it, and we are doing it. What I have seen in this situation is that the drivers have come together, the board of directors has come together, the team has come together. Even though we are now still in the midst of preparing for Bahrain and beyond, there is an ongoing review of what we can do to make sure we make changes that take us in the right direction.” In his optimism regarding the future, Vowles was at the same time very honest and clear about the expectations of this world championship: “We are not at championship level – he admitted – we are pushing everything in the right direction and so part of this means that there will always be long-term investments, and I can’t repeat this enough. That’s why we were successful in 2025. It was the investment in 2023, and that’s why our future will be successful. It’s the investments in the current year. That’s what I appreciate about the spending cap. It forces you to ask yourself: do you want to focus on the next race or an upgrade? Do you want to focus on positives that can be applied fundamentally over the next three years? It’s as easy a decision as it might seem at first glance, but, at this point, the reason we made the decision on Barcelona is to protect what we’re doing in terms of the upgrade strategy during the year.”