Williams Team Principal James Vowles has declared he has "no concerns" about the team’s trajectory heading into the 2026 Formula 1 season, despite the high-profile setback of missing the Barcelona shakedown earlier this year.

In an exclusive interview with Lawrence Barretto, Vowles revealed that in early January, the Grove-based outfit identified critical production delays that threatened their readiness. Faced with a tough choice — attempt to rush the FW48 to Barcelona or prioritize long-term readiness for pre-season testing in Bahrain — the leadership chose the latter.

"I have no concerns about going forward from here," Vowles said, speaking from the Williams Experience Centre, surrounded by championship-winning machines of the past. "As strange as this sounds, we need to as an organisation go through these sorts of events."

He described the decision as one of the “hardest” of his career but emphasized that it was essential for protecting the team’s strategic development timeline. Missing the shakedown forced Williams to watch as all ten rival teams hit the track while they remained on the sidelines. However, Vowles believes the temporary setback will pay dividends in the long run.

The team successfully completed their first shakedown at a damp Silverstone, with drivers Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz taking turns in the newly unveiled FW48 before shipping the car to Bahrain for final preparations ahead of the official pre-season test.

Vowles stressed that Williams, while ambitious, is still in a transitional phase of rebuilding — a process initiated when he joined from Mercedes in 2023. Every area of the organization, from aerodynamics to car build and simulation capability, is being strengthened to meet the demands of regularly competing at the front.

"We're not championship level across the board," Vowles admitted. "But we are nudging everything forward in the right direction of travel. That’s why 2025 was successful — it was the investment in 2023. And that's why our future will be successful. It's the investments in the current year."

The cost cap, he noted, has been instrumental in forcing long-term thinking. "It forces you to decide: do you focus on the next race or the next three years? The decision on Barcelona was made to protect our upgrade strategy across the year."

While rivals gathered track data in Barcelona, Williams ran simulations to iron out potential issues with their new car — built under sweeping regulation changes to the chassis and power units. Still, the team acknowledges they’ll need to catch up on real-world correlation during the six days of testing in Bahrain.

Despite this, Vowles remains confident. "There’s plenty of time to hit the ground running by Australia."

Looking ahead, the goal is clear: treat 2025’s fifth-place finish in the constructors’ championship — including two podiums for Sainz and Albon’s P9 in the drivers’ standings — not as a peak, but as a baseline. "I want to treat last year as a baseline, the base we operate from," Vowles said. "And we want to move forward from there."

For Williams, the road back to the front is long, but Vowles believes the pain of missing Barcelona was a necessary, even healthy, part of the journey.