Williams Team Principal James Vowles has set out how the squad intend to use the upcoming April break to “get ourselves back on the front foot” following a tricky start to the year, with the Briton admitting that the Grove-based outfit need “every single hour” of that time to improve.
Following the announcement that the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix will not take place in April and that no substitutions will be made, there will now be a five-week gap between this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix and the next round on the calendar, the Miami Grand Prix, in early May.
As such, Vowles has shared an insight into how Williams intend to use the break to look at how they can improve, with a particular focus being on reducing the weight of their car – an issue thar has so far hindered the team.
“Every single hour of that break we need in order to get ourselves back on the front foot by the time we come back to Miami,” Vowles explained in a video on Williams’ YouTube channel.
“Clearly we haven’t started the season where we wanted to, so that period for us is about taking stock of what we actually really can change. Without attrition, we can count on the fact that production can be moved towards future performance – some of that may come in Miami, some of that after that.
“It’s no secret we’re overweight – again, the developments will be in that period of time, making sure that we’re able to reduce the mass in the car in a sensible fashion.”
Williams faced a challenging pre-season before the 2026 campaign got underway, with the team missing the Barcelona Shakedown in January due to “delays in the FW48 programme”, though they later returned to action in time for both of February’s pre-season tests in Bahrain.
So far the squad have two points to their name thanks to Carlos Sainz’s P9 finish in China, and Vowles has admitted that they will look at strengthening various functions whilst they have the time to do so in April.
“We’ve gone through by that point three Grands Prix, but there’s never enough time after the event to go through every single tiny bit of data and understand really what we should have done in hindsight and what programmes we want to kick off in the future, and this provides us a good time to do that,” the team boss said.
“The drivers will come back here to the UK, and we’ll run our simulator in basically every single day of that as much as possible.
“We’ll complete pit stop practice with the crew back here as most of the days that we can as well, so it’ll be more about what we do fit in and what will provide the most bang for buck.”
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