Williams given F1 2026 hope thanks to ‘Adrian Newey-style’ innovation | F1 | Sport

The 2026 Williams Formula 1 car has finally hit the track for the first time for a shakedown this week. It is a crucial milestone for a team under pressure to deliver performance after delays to its development led to the decision to not make the trip to Barcelona for last week’s shakedown. They were the only outfit who failed to show up.

Three days’ worth of lost track time is undoubtedly a blow, even if there are opportunities for six more coming up with two separate tests in Bahrain later this month – which team principal James Vowles has said will definitely feature a Williams car. Proving that the FW48 is ready for some real-world testing, it was taken for a spin at Silverstone earlier this week.

Naturally, Williams do not want to give too much away about their designs and so they have released only a carefully curated set of photographs from the track day. And there is only actually one full photo of the car, showing it from the front with Alex Albon behind the wheel, recognisable by his dark blue helmet with pink accents.

We won’t know how far behind Williams are, if at all, in terms of performance until the first three days of Bahrain testing next week. But one particular innovation was spotted on the version of the car that was driven at the Silverstone shakedown which could well be cause for some optimism.

Writing for The Race, veteran former F1 engineer Gary Anderson noted the “interesting” front suspension, which is pullrod-operated and “very similar to what we saw on the Aston Martin” in terms of its geometry and design. He refers to the AMR26, the first Aston Martin F1 car designed by legend Adrian Newey, which turned up late to the Barcelona shakedown with some radical design features which turned heads up and down the pit lane.

Of course, the FW48’s performance has yet to be put to the test and there is no guarantee that a much-changed design will mean the new car will be quicker. But, given the regard in which Newey is held as the most successful F1 car designer of all time, the fact the Williams technical team seem to have developed a similar suspension concept may well be a source of comfort.

Having initially said it was “painful” to have pulled out of the Barcelona shakedown, Vowles has since tried to play down the level of impact that the lost track time will have for the rest of the year. Speaking on Monday as Williams unveiled their 2026 livery, he said he was “confident we’re in a good place” and that he was “not concerned at all” about having missed the trip to Spain.

Explaining the gamble his team made which led to the delay in development, Vowles said: “What you want to make sure you’re doing is you want to make sure you’re pushing your decisions on when you release chassis, front wing, rear wing, floor, bodywork as late as possible to catch all of the development goodness.

“So if you say, ‘Okay, we’re going to print the car’ in April last year, we, of course, would have a car – but it would be very slow compared to the capability of it, and you’d be behind in the upgrade race. I would much prefer to have been in Barcelona. I’m going to pre-empt all that. That was the goal. That was what we were intending to do. We did not achieve it.”

But he is confident Williams will be able to make up for lost track time, adding: “What’s missing is a correlation for where our aerodynamics really are and a correlation for where our vehicle dynamics really are. Track data is the only way of establishing that, so there is a loss. But, with six days of testing, with our driver-in-loop simulator that we invested in – state-of-the-art and up and running in the last year – we are able to mitigate [it] a lot.”