Williams were meant to arrive at the 2026 regulations as one of the winners. Instead, three races in, they are ninth fastest, with two points in the constructors' standings and a long list of problems to unpick.
The team principal James Vowles has accepted responsibility for the state his team is in. "I framed it as the failure to achieve the output... building the car by not scaling up the business in the right way," has been his public line, a framing that spreads the blame onto the organisation rather than any single engineer.
Carlos Sainz, the headline winter signing, has been blunt about the disappointment. He has described the opening to the season as a shock, and said at Suzuka that the gap to the front and even the head of the midfield cannot all be blamed on weight. He went into 2026 knowing there would be bumps, he has said, but not on this scale.
The broader truth is unsettling for a team that had recalibrated around this year. Since being bought by Dorilton Capital in August 2020 after the Williams family were forced to sell, the team have built steadily. Last year they finished fifth in the constructors' championship — their best placing since 2017 — and Vowles was consistent in telling the paddock that 2025 was never about the here and now. The development programme on the 2025 car was pared back early, with almost all aerodynamic hours redirected into the 2026 project from January of that year.
A rude awakening has followed. Rumours of crash-test problems and a car up to 30 kg overweight surfaced even before the announcement that Williams would miss the first pre-season test in Barcelona. The team eventually passed every mandatory crash test, but the reinforcement work required added more weight. By the Japanese GP, the weight disadvantage is understood to have been around 28 kg over the minimum 768 kg — a figure that, by even conservative estimates, is costing close to nine-tenths of a second per lap.
At the centre of it all has been the sheer complexity of the 2026 package. The car has been described internally as roughly three times more complicated than anything Williams had built before, and the manufacturing of components has fallen behind because the team's enterprise resource planning systems simply could not handle the load. Williams only recently overhauled those systems as part of Dorilton-era investment; 2026 has exposed exactly how much work remains.
Weight is not the only problem. The aerodynamic package has been openly described as not good enough, and Sainz has acknowledged this. The mechanical platform has been equally troubling. Williams have run more rake than any other team in 2026, and Alex Albon has repeatedly described the car as "three-wheeling" — lifting a tyre slightly off the track mid-corner, reducing contact patch and disrupting the aero platform. It is an old Williams problem that returned as soon as Sainz first tested for the team at Abu Dhabi in late 2024.
Suspension design has compounded the issue. Williams are the only team in 2026 running pull-rod at the front and push-rod at the rear, with a distinctive front wishbone geometry Vowles had publicly praised before the season. The Mercedes-supplied gearbox and rear suspension package appears to be working cleanly for the works team — the front, a Williams design, has not.
Albon was vocally frustrated in China and publicly suggested in Japan that his complaints about power-unit deployment were not being taken seriously, even after he adapted his driving to engineering suggestions. Both drivers are viewed as potential midfield targets if another team needs to restructure, and losing Sainz in particular would be read as a confidence vote against Williams' long-term project.
Vowles has not been left untouched. Critics have begun to compare this start to the bumpy early 2024 period that Williams already went through, and the fact a similar situation has recurred is a real concern. Pushing him out now, though, would rip up three years of rebuilding work — much as an early-2024 axe on Andrea Stella would have looked foolish at McLaren with hindsight.
Recovery starts in Miami. A weight reduction package is due and should claw back measurable lap time. Vowles has maintained that fifth in the championship remains the season goal. The midfield leader is only 18 points ahead, so the maths is not impossible. Whether this season is just an inevitable bump on a bigger upward arc, or evidence of deeper structural weakness, is the question Williams need to answer fast.
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*Originally published on [Formula One News](https://newsformula.one/article/williams-2026-rude-awakening-28kg-weight-three-wheeling-vowles-crisis). Visit for full coverage.*