DETAILS EMERGE OF WILLIAMS FW47 PROGRESS AHEAD OF SAINZ DEBUT

Williams’ FW47 will be “on time and on weight” when the 10 Formula 1 teams take to the Bahrain circuit on 26 February, it has been claimed.

Williams head into the new Formula 1 season looking to rebound having fallen back in last year’s Constructors’ Championship where they managed just 17 points and finished ninth on the log.

A ‘promising starting point’ for Williams

The last of the teams to shake-down their 2024 car, doing so only on the day before pre-season testing began in Bahrain, Williams then spent the first half of the championship racing an overweight FW46 which compromised the car’s competitiveness.

With the cars reportedly losing 0.3s per lap for every 10kgs over the minimum weight of 798kg, Williams team principal James Vowles revealed they were running “four and a half tenths a lap slower, every lap”.

The extra kilograms, as much as 15kg, meant that instead of focusing on adding performance to the car, Williams’ primary goal was weight reduction.

The team brought the weight down throughout the year and went onto score four top-ten results in the backend of the campaign before their efforts were blighted by several big crashes for Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto.

The good news for new signing Carlos Sainz, who has replaced Colapinto, is that it is being reported that Williams won’t have the same issues this season as the team is in a “better place”.

F1 2025 loading:

👉 The full F1 2025 schedule

👉 F1 2025 driver line-up: Who is confirmed for the 2025 grid?

According to Spanish daily Marca, the new FW47 will not only be ready “on time” but will also be “on weight” at the start of this month’s Bahrain pre-season test.

The publication called it a “promising starting point” but conceded that whether the FW47 makes gains on its rivals will also depend on what the other nine teams have achieved over the winter.

Sainz has been at work with the team at the Grove factory since last month and was in action earlier this week at the Barcelona circuit where he ran the Grove-based outfit’s 2023 F1 car.

“He’s relishing it,” Vowles told Motorsport.com of Sainz’s first few weeks as a Williams driver.

“You could see from the moment he jumped in the car in Abu Dhabi, his mind switched. This is where he wants to be, this is what he wants to do, he’s part of our success story. He’s fitting in perfectly.

“He’s a brilliant personality who, with him, brings not only race-winning pedigree but this want and desire for Williams to be successful.

“I was with him, with Alex and myself, for three, four hours – just talking through plans for the year, what we’ve changed, where we’re going.

“His contributions – as are Alex’s as well – are absolutely key for driving this team forward, because it’s now into a level of detail where you’re starting to chase milliseconds as opposed to the big-ticket items we work for.

“Already in the space of just a few weeks, real positive momentum from ideas, concepts, how we can change, how we can move forward, is coming.”

Read next: Will Red Bull give Max Verstappen new wings? ‘We will look at it’

2025-02-04T12:45:08Z