Williams brings crucial FW48 upgrade to Baku as 2026 season slips away

Williams reaches a defining moment in Baku

Williams will introduce its long-awaited major upgrade package for the FW48 at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, a weekend the team views as crucial both for its 2026 campaign and for the development of next year's car.

The season has been a painful one for Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon after the promise Williams showed last year. Delays meant the team missed the Barcelona Shakedown, and when the car finally appeared it was significantly overweight and affected by fundamental issues. Williams subsequently focused on a major package for the second half of the season, while making smaller changes such as a revised front wing at Silverstone and continuing its weight-reduction programme.

A steep climb back into the midfield

Williams scored five points finishes in the opening races, including Albon's eighth place in the attrition-heavy Monaco Grand Prix. Since then, however, the team has failed to score, with its cars commonly finishing 15th, 16th or 17th as rivals accelerated their development programmes.

Albon said the scale and frequency of upgrades across the midfield had changed dramatically this year. “This year, even the midfield teams are bringing three or four upgrades a year, and the size of upgrades are huge as well,” he said after the difficult race in Madrid. “The speed of the development race this year is huge – and yeah, we've fallen back.”

When the Baku package was approved several months ago, its projected gains appeared capable of returning Williams to contention. But the improvement of rival cars has shifted the benchmark. The FW48 should be faster, yet the team does not expect the upgrade to produce the dramatic jump that may once have seemed possible.

Sainz lowers expectations

Sainz believes the upgrade can move Williams closer to occasional points, but not to the position the team targeted at the start of the year. “That upgrade is going to definitely help us to get ourselves closer to potentially fighting for some points,” he said. “But realistically speaking, that’s nowhere near where we wanted to be this year.”

He added that the package could provide a motivational lift and give the team something to fight for in Baku, perhaps creating an opportunity to score “a point or two”. However, Sainz said Williams' main priority was now to put “all the eggs in next year’s basket.”

Albon estimates that Williams is currently losing roughly a second per lap in race conditions and finishing around 50 seconds behind the midfield. “This has to be a pretty big upgrade to do it,” he said, while acknowledging that he did not expect it to deliver the full deficit-closing step.

Proof of process matters as much as lap time

The Baku package is therefore likely to be Williams' final major effort of the 2026 season. Its importance extends beyond the immediate points battle: a performance gain close to the team's original calculations would demonstrate that its development systems are beginning to work and provide confidence for the FW50 programme.

Team Principal James Vowles has pointed to revised processes, stronger methodology and key recruits including Chief Optimisation and Planning Officer Piers Thynne as reasons for optimism. He said Williams had previously relied too heavily on educated guesses because its simulation technology only came online in November, after much of the car had already been designed.

Vowles cited rear-ride-height development as an example of how a seemingly small error can send aerodynamic work in the wrong direction. He warned that the team could not guarantee a mistake-free future, but said the objective was to build enough depth in its systems, tools, processes and people to identify and correct more errors before they compromise a car.

Williams' previous competitiveness in Azerbaijan offers a reminder of what the team has lost: Sainz qualified second and finished third there last year. The 2026 Baku weekend will show whether the FW48 upgrade can recover even part of that performance—and whether Williams is finally moving in the right direction for its next-generation project.