Williams set for unusual name change for 2027 F1 season | F1 | Sport
Williams are set to deviate from their usual naming tradition as they celebrate a special anniversary next year. The 2027 season will mark 50 years since Williams Grand Prix Engineering first took part in a Formula 1 world championship race, and the name of the car that they hope Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon will be driving is set to be the FW50 to mark the occasion.
It is a slight departure from their usual naming custom, which always uses the FW prefix, short for founder Frank Williams, and usually just goes up by one with each new car. This year’s racing machine is the FW48 and so the 2027 car would ordinarily be called the FW49, but they are set to skip a year.
It is the same plan as a decade ago, when Williams decided against calling their 2017 car the FW39 and went straight to the FW40 to mark the 40th anniversary of their F1 debut. That should have put them on track to ensure no change was needed for the 50th anniversary, but Covid changed that when teams were allowed to continue to use their 2020 cars in the 2021 season and cash-strapped Williams had to take that option.
Funding is not so much of an issue these days. F1 is booming and Williams are in a more stable position than they were even just a few years ago. Things have not always been smooth sailing since Dorilton Capital took over the team in 2020, but the promises they made then were that the Williams name and the FW car-naming tradition would remain untouched, and they have up to now.
But their fortunes on track have not gone the way they had hoped. After a strong 2025 season where they were comfortably ‘best of the rest’ at the head of the midfield, Williams have failed to adapt well to the new regulations this year and have scored just 11 points, leaving them marooned ninth in the constructors’ standings.
Optimism that they could develop their way out of trouble this year is fading and the saga puts them at risk of losing Sainz, who has openly admitted he is considering his options for 2027. Team principal James Vowles has admitted his surprise at just how far Williams have fallen back and the told Formula1.com how the situation has prompted a full rethink of how the team works.
He said: “The cost cap is the best thing that ever came in, I maintain that, but it also baked in some of these inefficiencies and we’re having to dig hard to get them back out, while still producing a car that goes on track, and updating it. The reason why I said I think we needed to go through this is, we’ve made so many changes that I’m not sure we’d have made quite to the same level if the car was [only] a little bit heavy, and a little bit late.
“We made some bold decisions on what we’re going to do with some of our systems that just weren’t working. Tipping out some core systems in the middle of the year… I assure you there’s not another team on the grid trying to do that. We’re also trying to create a whole new chassis in the middle of the year. It used to be commonplace, but not anymore. That’s a hell of a drive.”
