Williams crew principal James Vowles has confirmed each his drivers are racing up to date variations of final yr’s automobile.
He clarified the crew’s method to the season following hypothesis Carlos Sainz Jnr was out-performed by his crew mate within the opening races as a result of he alone was driving an older-specification automobile.
Williams usually ran its vehicles in several specs final yr because of the numerous quantity of injury it incurred over the season. Nevertheless Vowles insisted there isn’t a distinction between the {hardware} Sainz and Alexander Albon are utilizing. “Each drivers are utilizing precisely the identical factor, an evolution of the ’24 chassis,” he mentioned.
“It’s the identical chassis, the identical entrance wings, the identical gearboxes,” Vowles explained in a video released by the team. “All the things is of the identical specification and customary.”
Vowles mentioned the crew approached the season this fashion in an effort to shift extra assets to its work on subsequent yr’s automobile, as F1 will introduce drastically revised technical rules for 2026.
“Each drivers are working an evolution of final yr’s chassis,” he defined. “It’s developed precisely the identical means, however we all the time meant to undergo this sequence of rules, the final yr of the [current] rules, ensuring that we’re successfully evolving final yr’s chassis whereas we’re redesigning from scratch.
“That’s actually essential as a result of it permits us to place our eggs in an funding basket of 2026 and past. It’s not a monetary query, it’s time useful resource. We’re all up towards the fee cap, however it permits us to re-optimise and guarantee that we’re getting every part for ’26 we will out of it.”
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Williams completed ninth within the championship with final yr’s automobile however Vowles mentioned they “knew there was fairly a little bit of potential throughout the chassis.” After the primary two rounds of the brand new season they’re tied for fourth place with Ferrari on 17 factors.
“You possibly can see we’ve moved up the sector and I feel there’s extra efficiency to return from the bundle we’ve in the intervening time,” mentioned Vowles.
As this yr’s technical rules are little modified from final season, Vowles believes nearly all of groups have completed the identical as Williams.
“I feel various groups on the grid have completed one thing fairly just like what we’ve completed,” he mentioned. “Not all, however most can have completed.”
Sainz joined Williams from Ferrari this yr and has repeatedly mentioned it’ll take him a number of races to discover ways to get probably the most out of his new automobile. Nevertheless Vowles mentioned he’s inspired that each drivers make comparable feedback about how Williams can enhance their chassis.
“One attention-grabbing level of each Alex and Carlos is their suggestions may be very mirrored, so the place we’ve weaknesses and the place we’ve strengths, each are very assured on that,” he mentioned. “And truly it has resulted in lots of what we name the [in-car] instruments – so the differential, the engine braking – all being very comparable between each vehicles as a result of their requirement for stability, the requirement for a way they drive may be very, very comparable.
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“Maybe extra essential than that, there’s some traits we nonetheless have which are maybe inferior to what Carlos is used to from his earlier days. That’s what we’ve obtained to be actively engaged on to guarantee that we’re actually digging deep and discovering each little bit of efficiency out there, each in ’25 and ’26.
“However as two people, given that each human on the planet is completely different, they’re extremely aligned on what they want from the automobile.”
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