Vowles insists Albon and Sainz remain committed to Williams despite 2025 slump

Williams team principal James Vowles has dismissed suggestions that Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz could seek exits from Grove, telling reporters to go directly to his drivers for proof of their commitment. “Speak to Alex, speak to Carlos; they want to be part of this journey, and that’s the best I can tell you,” Vowles said when asked whether Williams needed to demonstrate forward progress to retain its lineup.

The backdrop to those remarks is a difficult start to the 2025 season. Williams have slipped from fifth in the constructors’ standings to eighth, with the FW48 carrying a well-documented weight penalty as the sport transitions to new technical regulations. The regression has sharpened scrutiny on whether Albon and Sainz — both capable of attracting interest from rival teams — will stay patient with a project that has yet to deliver on its promises.

Vowles, who joined Williams ahead of the 2023 season with a mandate to overhaul the team’s infrastructure and culture, argued the current difficulties do not undermine the foundations being laid. “It is really important to me and to my board to demonstrate we’re not the Williams of old,” he said. “The Williams of old would have had a difficult winter and we would have languished back there. I want to demonstrate we have the capability to fight back up the field and add performance at a very high rate, and we are doing that at the moment.”

He acknowledged, however, that the work is not finished. “The drivers aren’t here or interested in being just into Q3, but they are interested in being demonstrated that we have facilities behind us that are able to fix and remedy problems when they come up. I think we’re on the right pathway for that but we haven’t done enough yet.”

To accelerate the rebuild, Williams have completed a series of senior hires from rival outfits, most notably Piers Thynne, McLaren’s former chief operating officer. Sainz, who raced for McLaren earlier in his career, welcomed the appointment. “Piers is someone that I know pretty well from my time in McLaren, which I think will be a massive help on all the production line and operation side,” the Spaniard said. “Happy to see that we were able to react, realise quickly that we were not at the level that we thought we could potentially be.”

Vowles framed the rapid response to the team’s winter struggles as evidence that Williams’ new systems are functioning as intended — and as the clearest signal yet to both drivers that the organisation around them is capable of course-correcting under pressure.