Vowles targets Azerbaijan as the moment Williams finally unlocks FW48's true pace

Williams team principal James Vowles has pinpointed the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as the point at which the FW48 will finally show its genuine pace, with the Grove-based outfit still carrying excess weight that is masking the car’s true potential midway through the 2025 season.

Speaking in his regular briefing, Vowles acknowledged that the current chassis remains compromised despite a noticeable improvement in results over recent rounds. “We’re still overweight, but it’s a significantly reduced number from where we were at the beginning of the season,” he said. “We will be on the weight limit. It will just be further on in the season from now.”

The team principal described the situation as “painful”, explaining that stripping the excess weight would translate directly into lap time gains. “What we all do is take the amount of weight, take it off, and look where we’d be on the lap time chart, and we’d be significantly higher up than we are today,” Vowles added.

Williams has a structured development plan in place, with incremental upgrades scheduled through to and beyond the summer break. A package is due to arrive as soon as this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, with larger steps planned at selected rounds thereafter.

“There’ll be nice steps coming through all the way to the August break and beyond the August break,” Vowles said. “And I believe that as we go beyond the August break towards the Baku time, you’ll see the full potential of this car come forward.”

He remained confident that the trajectory would continue to push Williams up the constructors’ standings. “I expect us to keep moving up the field,” he said, framing the weight reduction as essentially free performance waiting to be recovered rather than a fundamental design problem.

Williams currently sits eighth in the constructors’ championship with 11 points, a position Vowles clearly views as a temporary underrepresentation of where the FW48 should be competing once the development programme reaches its intended milestones.