Williams ‘going backwards’ as Guenther Steiner delivers James Vowles verdict

Guenther Steiner has joked James Vowles cannot be judged as Williams team principal until he has finished reading the “inbox” full of engineering solutions to the FW48’s problems.

According to the former F1 team boss, after promising a better F1 2026, Williams has instead gone “backwards”.

Guenther Steiner delivers brutal Williams verdict

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Williams enjoyed one of its strongest seasons in recent years in 2025, with the Grove team tipped to build on that this year after focusing last year’s car development almost entirely on preparing for 2026.

The team’s plans began to unravel during the pre-season when Williams missed the opening test due to a delay in the build of the car, and was also late to the track in Bahrain for the first official pre-season outing.

On the back foot from the offset, Williams is lagging behind its fellow Mercedes’ customer teams with 11 points compared to Alpine’s 61 and McLaren’s 220.

The team suffered a further blow in Hungary when it dropped behind Aston Martin on the track as the slowest of the sport’s established teams. Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon were half a second down on Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.

Williams, though, has yet to introduce its B-spec car.

Reducing the weight of the FW48 is a big issue for Williams, with Vowles having told PlanetF1.com and other media at the Australian Grand Prix that his “inbox is all of the engineering steps to not just bring it down, but actually be underweight by a good amount”.

The first steps towards that will be unveiled in Zandvoort, with the FW48’s upgrades “including weight reduction”, before an “almost entirely new car” takes to the track in Baku.

Then, and only then, says Steiner, can Vowles’ leadership be judged.

“As much as I think he’s not doing a good job, I think you need to at least give him time to read all his emails, which he got at the beginning of the year,” Steiner joked in response to Vowles’ “inbox” claim.

“He knows what to do. He just didn’t have time to read them.

“So, let him read his emails. Find a solution by the end of the year. If he hasn’t got to all the emails by the end of the year, then let him go.”

Steiner, though, isn’t foreseeing glory and greatness for Williams this season even with the B-spec car.

“I think they’ve got a big chance to pick up two points here, two points there to get to 11 [points] because I don’t think that Williams is going to pick up any more points,” he predicted.

The former Haas boss admitted he was disappointed with Williams’ performance.

“They promised us at the beginning of the season, ‘We will be back; we know exactly what to do.’

“Guess what?

“They’re going backwards instead of forwards at the moment.”

Steiner isn’t the only person concerned about Williams’ season going forward.

Outqualified by Aston Martin in Hungary, Albon admitted the AMR26 upgrade package was something that Williams could only “dream” of.

“I don’t know what kind of upgrade that Aston had, but I could only dream of that,” Albon said.

“We could only dream of an upgrade like that – was it net, possibly, the gain, one and a half, two seconds? I mean, fair play to them.

“We’re going to be fighting with them in some races purely because of the straightline speed, but I can tell you in the corners they’re considerably faster than us.

“It’s eye-opening because, also for us, we know what our Baku upgrade is. It’s not that. So we have work to do.”

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