Vowles: “The Williams FW48 will be ready for Bahrain, only there will we discover any overweight”

The Williams team principal has clarified Williams is not present in Barcelona for the behind closed doors Shakedown organized by the teams to ‘get ahead’ of the test sessions scheduled in Bahrain starting from 11 February. According to rumors, the Grove team would have had some hiccups in the roadmap relating to passing the crash tests. Williams team principal James Vowles on the English team’s official Vowles was also available to some English publications, including for example The-Race.com and Autosport, on which occasion he revealed other non-secondary details about what happened ‘upstream’ of the decision not to take part in the Barcelona Shakedown: “We could have done it, but by doing so I would have had to reverse the impact on spare parts, components and updates in Bahrain, Melbourne and beyond – in Vowles’ words – racing in a cold and humid Barcelona did not give substantial advantages compared to a VTT, especially if the price to pay was to put the preparation of spare parts at risk. The priority is to prepare adequately for Bahrain and Melbourne”. Vowles also addressed the issue relating to the hypothesis of a Williams with overweight problems: “The weight will not be known until we arrive in Bahrain. It is impossible to know, because the car needs to be assembled without sensors and we will only find out in Sakhir. If we are overweight at that point an aggressive plan will be triggered to try to eliminate the excess weight, but at the moment what is circulating are just rumours. If we discover that we are overweight I will give the appropriate explanations”.