Williams, like most of the grid, highlighted the F1 2026 regulation changes as a massive chance to jump forward in the pecking order. Instead, the Grove-based team has slipped backwards for now.

The 2025 campaign was Williams’ best in almost a decade, finishing fifth in the Constructors’ standings, but something of a false start has not helped in the team’s quest for on-track performance this time around.

Williams FW48 weight and pace issues hinder early F1 2026 progress

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Williams was the only team unable to make an appearance at the five-day pre-season shakedown test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, after what it described as “delays in the FW48 programme as we continue to push for maximum car performance.”

While rumours of failing mandatory crash tests were not confirmed, the team added it would run an extensive Virtual Track Testing schedule and conduct a 200km filming day to look to make up the shortfall in running.

Williams confirmed ahead of Bahrain testing that the FW48 had passed all the required crash testing. It soon got to work by clocking one of the highest lap counts across the six days of running in Sakhir.

While underlying pace was largely unclear, due to the natures of pre-season testing and teams wanting to hide their true potential, what was clear is that Williams’ car was reliable from the off – never a guarantee, especially in a season of major change.

Such was the work completed, team principal James Vowles did not think Williams was on the back foot heading into the new campaign, given the work it was able to complete elsewhere.

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Williams FW48’s weight the main early on-track deficit

The main headline surrounding the 2026 Williams has been that it sits above the minimum weight limit, and that shaving mass from the FW48 would bring immediate performance.

What Vowles pointed out at the Australian Grand Prix, though, is that while bringing the car’s weight down is not in itself a difficult task, the cost cap implications of doing so could hit the team later on in the season.

With that, he put a timeline of “six races or so” to bring the car to its target weight, by a variety of means.

Highlighting that the cost cap remains “net very positive” for the sport, Vowles told PlanetF1.com and other media in Melbourne: “It’s not complicated to bring [weight] down.

“Already, what I have in my inbox today is all of the engineering steps to not just bring it down, but actually be underweight by a good amount. That exists to us.

“If this was [a] cost cap free world, I would execute it tomorrow. It’d be done in a few weeks. It’s not, so you’ve got to time it with when those components effectively start to go out of life, and when we will be doing upgrades later on in the season.

“It’s a complexity, but it’s a good complexity, if you see what I mean.”

Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon point to wider car issues

Williams has spoken proudly in the past year of having one of the strongest combined driver line-ups on the grid in Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz, but both have voiced their concerns about areas of the car beyond its weight.

Sainz, to his credit, scored two points at the Chinese Grand Prix, meaning that the team has at least got off the mark at this early stage of the season.

Elsewhere, however, the team has taken the reasonable step of opting to run other races as de facto test sessions, seeing how the car works in race conditions to help plot its development path for the rest of the season.

Both drivers have been frank in their assessment of the car, with Sainz in particular having chosen Williams as his post-Ferrari destination due to the potential he believed was in the team.

However, he could sense the tough start to 2026 on the horizon.

“For sure, it’s been a shock for me, for the team, for James [Vowles], for Alex [Albon], for all the engineers,” Sainz explained in Japan about the team’s early-season form.

“I think it’s no secret that it’s been tough, and I could already smell it coming in December, January.

“I started bracing for the bump, because we already started having these conversations of delays; not arriving at that first test, starting here in the overweight numbers.

“I said it doesn’t look very promising to start, but, for me, like I said from the beginning of the bump, I knew at some point Williams was going to hit a bump.

“Not all the roads to success are linear. There was always going to be a bump. This bump is big, probably even bigger than what I expected.”

As for Albon, he does not get drawn into talking about the car’s weight as its only issue. Suffering a DNS in China, his race time has been more limited than his teammate, but still sees problems beyond how heavy the FW48 is in its early specification.

“I think, as a team, we know we haven’t done a good job with the weight,” he said at Suzuka.

“But I think we also know that our downforce package is not up there either. We had plenty of time last year to focus on this set of regulations and come up with a good car.

“We had plenty of wind tunnel hours, plenty of time to develop it. When I see the gap to the top teams, and even today [Japanese GP qualifying, ed.], [Pierre] Gasly was 1.2 seconds quicker than us.

“That’s not all weight, and we need to add downforce. That’s why you will not hear me only talking about weight because, as a team, we need to also make sure we add downforce.”

What next for Williams?

Work is ongoing up and down the grid to manufacture upgrades for the upcoming races, and that is no different at Williams.

As for their outright pace, one element to watch in the coming weekends will be when Albon and Sainz are able to fight for points on a regular basis.

What is clear is that the team has aimed high with its design, so as and when early issues can be ironed out, better results should come in time. As Vowles explained, however, a quick fix in Formula 1 is more difficult to achieve these days.

The team has a bonus in that it carries Mercedes power, widely considered to be the best power unit on the grid at this stage, so engineering impacts should be backed up on track with a fast engine.

Having started the season slowest of the Mercedes-powered teams, however, and with upgrades in the pipeline everywhere, the challenge will not just be bringing parts that improve the FW48, but adding performance at a faster rate than those around them.

Credit should be given to the team for how it has bounced back from early setbacks, but given the lofty ambitions being held at Williams, it has fallen short so far.

Early F1 2026 season rating: 5

Additional reporting by Mat Coch

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