Williams doomed to F1 misery in Melbourne as brutal verdict on 2026 car revealed

Sainz during Day 3 of Bahrain Test 1 — Photo: © IMAGO

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Williams doomed to F1 misery in Melbourne as brutal verdict on 2026 car revealed

Williams' pre-season prep hasn't been ideal

Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Wednesday 18 February 2026 08:58

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Williams could be in for a miserable to start to the F1 season if reports about their 2026 car are found to be true.

The Grove-based outfit only started testing their FW48 last week in Bahrain, having previously missed the five days of the Barcelona shakedown after Williams reportedly failed their crash tests.

Now, it has been reported by Spanish F1 insider Carlos Miquel, that Williams will be 1.5 to 2 seconds behind the leaders this year. He also added that Williams wanted to bring an aerodynamic upgrade to the first race of the season in Melbourne, but due to a delay this won't arrive until the fourth or fifth race (Bahrain or Saudi Arabia).

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Insider Antonio Lobato also claimed that Williams failed their crash test five times and that the car is 25-30kg overweight, something that cannot be fixed in the short term.

How did Williams perform in first week of Bahrain testing

Over the three days of testing in Bahrain, Williams covered 422 laps and gathered 2,283km (1,418 miles) of valuable data for the team, up there with McLaren in regards to mileage.

In the overall timings across the three days, Williams were way down on their rivals with Alex Albon setting his best time of 1:36.793 on the Friday, a full three seconds behind fastest driver Kimi Antonelli.

Carlos Sainz on the other hand, set a best time of 1:37.186 with only new team Cadillac, Racing Bulls and Aston Martin setting worse times.

While these were not bad efforts for a team playing catch up, Sainz admitted after the first week of testing that the upcoming season would be 'challenging' and there is a lot of 'work ahead'.

"Overall, it’s been good to test the car properly these past days and be able to do as many laps as we have done," he explained.

"We are still playing catch up on certain things, but doing over 210 laps has given me a much better understanding of what we can expect this year. The cars feel very different and it’s going to be a challenging season, but this is nothing new and I’m up for the challenge.

"It’s still early days to discuss performance in detail and compare ourselves to our direct competitors, but it is clear that the gap between teams is not as tight as last year, at least not for now.

"What is important for me is that we have identified the main areas we want to focus on in the upcoming weeks and I hope that we can improve gradually as we get closer to Melbourne. There is a lot of work ahead of us as a team so there is no time to lose."

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