James Vowles states why Williams is best suited over McLaren and Alpine to benefit from Mercedes engines
Williams has been a Mercedes engine customer since 2014.
James Vowles believes out of all the Mercedes engine customers, it is Williams that stands to gain the most of the relationship.
Despite losing Aston to Honda, Mercedes is still the biggest power unit supplier on the grid and will power three customers as well as its own works team in 2026.
James Vowles makes Williams prediction over Mercedes customer rivals
Given the team’s history, there is confidence that Mercedes could emerge as the frontrunners once again in 2026 and so other teams with Mercedes engines in the cars are optimistic they too would rise up the table.
In 2026, Mercedes will power McLaren, as they have done since 2021, and Williams, as it has done since 2014, while Alpine also opted to become a customer following an unsuccessful end to making its own engines.
The combined 1,136 laps done by Mercedes engines in the Barcelona shakedown has only increased optimism surrounding the teams but Vowles believes his Williams are in the best place to benefit from being a Silver Arrows customer.
“Mercedes are mighty at this,” he responded when asked why Mercedes had a problem-free run in Barcelona while McLaren and Alpine who completed at least 150 laps less than the Mercedes. “They are very good at these regulation changes and bring it all together.
“I think for Alpine, [there] is probably a steeper learning curve than there is for us. We’ve been embedded with Mercedes for a long, long time, and we also run their gearbox, which is a difference with McLaren.
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“So I think there’s a difference in our circumstance that may give us an advantage in that case, but what I can say is the cars come together very well. The integration is there, but clearly we need to prove it out properly in Bahrain by running consistently with high mileage.”
As for how Williams would have fared in Barcelona, that will never be known after the team was forced to miss the test due to delays in building the car.
Despite that, Vowles was confident the Virtual Track Testing allowed them to do all the mileage they had planned to.
“I can’t comment on why Alpine and McLaren struggled, what I can say is on the VTT, we did the mileage that we wanted to do,” he said.
“We were stressing the system so what we were looking at is stressing our cooling system, making sure we optimised it, understanding how we can change it for the future as well. So it’s an optimisation for the future.”
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