It’s a demonstration of the merciless nature of Formula 1 that Williams, statistically one of the most successful teams of all time in terms of championships won, has been bumping along the bottom for more than two decades and narrowly avoided financial extinction at the turn of the decade.

Williams last claimed the drivers’ and constructors’ championships in 1997 and ceased to be in the mix for regular grand prix victories in 2004. It last won a race in 2012, a thrilling outlier for Pastor Maldonado in Spain.

The team’s reliance on drivers who brought a budget rather than great talent was characteristic of its decline, and Williams became a relic of the era when teams were owned and run by the individuals whose name was above the factory door. It nearly followed the likes of Tyrrell and Colin Chapman’s Lotus into oblivion.

There have been more mis-steps under the ownership of the Dorilton Capital investment fund but, since the appointment of former Mercedes strategist James Vowles as team principal, the direction of travel (to employ a frequently used Vowles-ism) has been towards improvement. The team finished fifth in the constructors’ championship last season, its highest since 2017.

As Williams holds its necessarily low-key 2026 season launch on Tuesday, having missed last week’s ‘shakedown’ in Barcelona, let’s look at its prospects for the season to come.

Williams Barcelona livery

What’s new at Williams?

In terms of frontline personnel, Williams enjoys continuity in terms of its technical team, which is maturing after a recruitment drive in 2023-24. The FW48 will be the first Williams with ex-Alpine technical director Matt Harman fulfilling that role after his promotion from design director last year, but the main focus since that influx of new staff has been to bring the factory’s antediluvian facilities up to modern standards after years of underinvestment.

During a visit to the team’s Grove home in early January, Motorsport.com saw a great deal of new machinery, particularly in the area devoted to rapid prototyping. The team has also been overhauling its production and quality-control systems.

What’s the biggest challenge to Williams?

Having to cancel its presence at the Barcelona ‘shakedown week’ was both an embarrassment and a setback for the team. Last year, it made a point of being the first to take to the track with its new car, the purpose being to signal a clean break with the issues of its recent past.

It’s understood that while the monocoque had passed its mandatory crash tests, the nose cone did not. This has prompted a wave of speculation that the FW48 is overweight – particularly in the areas that then had to be strengthened to pass the crash tests. Vowles was noticeably evasive on that subject in an online ‘round table’ interview last week.

The fact is that it is extremely difficult to engineer a modern F1 car to the minimum weight limit, as evinced by that figure only being reduced by 30kg this season despite the cars and their wheels being narrower.

Missing the shakedown means it will have to spend time in the Bahrain tests previously earmarked for performance work on running through basic operational checks that rivals will have completed in Barcelona. Obviously, there were varying degrees of success in that regard; while both Mercedes drivers completed race simulations as well as plenty of laps, others such as Audi and Cadillac had a more fraught time.

Carlos Sainz, Williams

What’s the strongest asset for Williams?

When the hybrid engine formula was first introduced in 2014, Williams enjoyed a brief resurgence by dint of having the Mercedes power unit – by far the most competitive. That advantage faded with convergence and as others shifted to Mercedes power.

Though it’s unlikely Mercedes will enjoy an advantage of similar magnitude under the latest set of engine regulations, well-placed rumours over several months have suggested the new Merc power unit is very strong. In theory, its reliable showing through the Barcelona shakedown mitigates some of the disadvantage Williams faces, having missed that track time – but running a power unit in a car designed hand-in-glove with the chassis is a different matter from running as an engine customer.

What Williams certainly enjoys is a highly competitive driver line-up. Carlos Sainz is smart, fast, and a proven GP winner, while Alex Albon has shown similar levels of pace.

What’s the goal in F1 2026 for Williams?

Much as it would love for this to be another 1992, when it turned up with a car more than a second a lap faster than its competitors, Williams knows it’s starting this season on the back foot already. What it doesn’t need is for the delay in car completion to compound into lack of running during the tests.
 
Hitting the ground running in Bahrain would be its ideal scenario in the short term; in the further future, being in the mix for regular points to build on last season’s fifth place would be a bonus.

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Williams skips 2026 Barcelona test amid shock F1 car delay

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Sam Darnold not only accepted a plastic, blow-up ham hock hat as a gift from a stranger — accent on STRANGE — Darnold put it on his head.

“Ham for Sam! Ham for Sam!” the guys around the prop guy started chanting.

Then the dude handed the Seahawks’ Pro Bowl quarterback a blue and white serape, the blankets native to Mexico. Darnold put that on, too.

Someone else handed the 28-year-old quarterback a portrait of the Marlboro Man, from the 1970s cigarette ads. The Marlboro Man was Dick Hammer. He passed away in 1999. He was Darnold’s grandfather. He was also a stuntman. A lead firefighter on the 1970s TV series Emergency! A USC basketball player who played in the 1954 Final Four. And a 1964 U.S. Olympic volleyball player.

Except this Marlboro Man had Darnold with his flowing, red hair and reddish-brown beard superimposed over Grandpa’s face, under the cowboy hat and behind the cigarette.

“I get to keep this?!” Darnold said, excitedly.

He did.

On another podium across the vast room of the San Jose Convention Center Monday night, one facing fans behind metal barriers in a corner, practice-squad cornerback Shemar Jean-Charles was answering fans’ questions.

“Drake or Kendrick?” a 20-something asked.

“Kendrick. I was Kendrick way back,” Jean-Charles said of the 27-time Grammy Award winner, the most-awarded rap star ever. “Ask my friends.”

Rookie left guard Grey Zabel answered a question about his favorite rock bands with “Poison.” You know, the 1980s and ‘90s rock band from Pennsylvania? “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”?

That has to be a Seahawks locker-room first.

A young blonde woman, supposedly from the media (that’s a loose designation at this event) reached up to another podium. She handed Devon Witherpsoon a small note. It was the size of a fortune out of fortune cookie. Then she made a heart side to the Pro Bowl cornerback with her hands. Witherspoon smiled warmly, thanked her, and returned the heart hands.

Meanwhile, also inexplicably, Herb Alpert music played quietly in the background overhead.

Jimmy Kimmel’s sidekick Guillermo Rodríguez, the security-guard guy with jokes on the late-night TV show, handed out Crustables to reserve linebacker Jared Ivery and Jamie Sherriff. They ate them with exaggerated “Ummmmmms!!”

(What Guillermo and Kimmel’s audience don’t know: The Seahawks provide Crustables in a bin as pre-practice snacks for quick energy, on the way from the locker room to the practice field at their team facility back home in Renton.)

Running back Kenny McIntosh, on injured reserve, commandeered a full-on television camera from Guillermo. McIntosh walked over to film cornerback Riq Woolen, egging on more cheers and giving the chain he’d been wearing to fans screaming “Riiiiiiiiqqqqqqq!” from behind metal barriers.

The three previous Seahawks teams interacted and had fun with the ridiculousness that is Super Bowl media night, now called Super Bowl Opening Night and held on Monday to begin game week. The 2013 and ‘14 “Legion of Boom” Seahawks had dominant personalities such as Marshawn Lynch, Richard Sherman and Michael Bennett to dominant the floor of this extravaganza.

This is, after all, the event at which Lynch in Feb. 2015, before Super Bowl 49 inside the NBA arena in downtown Phoenix, famously uttered: “I’m just here so I don’t get fined” — for an entire hour. That included 29 times in the first 4 minutes.

And those teams were coached by more free-spirited Pete Carroll.

Yet interestingly, these relatively lesser-known Seahawks are leaning waaaaay in to the extra-curriculars to begin Super Bowl 60 week in the Bay Area.

More interestingly, that’s by design of their no-nonsense coach.

Mike Macdonald wants it this way. Yes, the 38-year-old son of a West Point graduate and career Army officer who barks military commands such as “If you’re walkin’, you’re WRONG!” to his players on the practice field told his Seahawks to have all the fun they want with the media, the pretend media, the fans, the excess that is the Super Bowl.

“This is incredible that we’re here. We’re going to lean into that,” Darnold said during his 60 minutes on his podium, in front of reporters and cameras that stayed four deep in front of him in a semicircle as he talked the entire hour.

“We’re going to lean into that, have fun with each other throughout the week, being in the hotel together.

“I think the more you lean into it, the more fun you can have, the more loose you can be through (the game).”

Rookie reserve offensive lineman Mason Richman, from the University of Iowa, looked around at the scene around him and marveled at the show.

Richman said Macdonald told his Seahawks players: “Just enjoy these first two days, because all it is is just media. ...

“And then we are going to lock in. That’s just what we do. It’s like during the season, when we get back from that off day on Tuesday we get right back to work.”

Yet even fun had its limit Monday night.

Leonard Williams is as thrilled as any Seahawk to be here. It’s the 31-year-old Pro Bowl defensive lineman’s first Super Bowl in his 11 NFL seasons. When the team won the NFC championship game Jan. 25 over the Los Angeles Rams, Williams and his wife Hailey laid on Lumen Field and did snow angels in the blue-and-green confetti that fell onto the field during the postgame celebration.

But when his 60 minutes speaking at his showcase podium were finally over Monday night, Williams exhaled. The 6-foot-5, 310-pound lineman looked and sounded like he’d just run the 48 miles from San Francisco to San Jose.

“That was a LONG time!” Williams said, sighing.

“I’m not used to talking that much.”