Vowles: Williams' Baku upgrades won't be enough for points

Williams will arrive in Azerbaijan with a significant upgrade package for its troubled FW48, but team boss James Vowles has already warned the new hardware won't be enough to deliver points.

Why it matters:

The Grove outfit has managed just 11 points from the opening 14 rounds, sitting ninth in the constructors' championship. The Baku package is a necessary step, but Vowles is making clear it won't suddenly transform Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon into regular points scorers.

The details:

• Williams arrived at pre-season testing late and overweight, and those winter mistakes continue to shape its season.
• On The Fast And The Curious podcast, Vowles was blunt: "A lot of the mistakes that we made across the winter period will stay with us all the way until the end of this year."
• The aerodynamic and mechanical update brings "small steps" that won't reach "even the bare minimum of where I'd like to be, which is scoring points for a weekend."
• The priority now is gathering data and steadying the ship before shifting full focus to next year's car.

What's next:

Vowles expects the team to move forward on the grid in 2027 — "It's hard to move backwards" — but admits "it will still be a tough old slog." For Williams, meaningful progress is a slow, methodical process that no single upgrade package can shortcut.