James Vowles says rate of bringing performance to the car not enough to move Williams forward

This statement from Vowles comes after the 2026 British Grand Prix, where Williams failed to score any points despite introducing a car upgrade.

It has been a frustrating campaign so far in 2026 for the once-great F1 team who failed to get their FW48 ready in time for the preseason shakedown in Barcelona. When the car finally made its debut in Bahrain, it was overweight and woefully slow.

As it stands, Williams has not yet managed to improve their car, and in Williams' post-Silverstone debrief, Vowles admitted his team needs to work harder to improve and revealed an internal review is being conducted to address this issue.

He said: "I would say right now what's clear is our rate of bringing performance to the car—which is a little bit nuanced in how I mean that—is not at the rate required in order for us to move forward.

"Step one of all of that is to make sure that we take time to fully understand not just what we've done in Silverstone, but really what we've done across the entire season," he added. "All of them have clues and evidence as to what went well and what didn't at the same time.

"How quickly we evaluate that, and typically I would expect that to be done within the next two weeks, then define what we do in Spa, what we do in Budapest, what we do across the remainder of the season, and what we do going into next year at the same time.

"Now that is, I would say, business as usual for a Formula 1 team," the former Mercedes strategy boss pointed out. "The amount of highs and lows you get, the amount of learning you get, the amount of failures you get, the difference to expectations that does change week on week.

"But it is just the nature of a business that is bringing performance, bringing you items that didn't exist previously. They didn't exist in the world. And to a certain extent, no one else certainly provides you with data, but no one else has done it.

"So we have to be learning on the fly as a result of that," Vowles concluded.