Get all your news in one place.

100’s of premium titles.
One app.

Get all your news in one place.

100’s of premium titles. One news app.

Motorsport

Is Williams making the right call to stop 2025 F1 development early?

Alex Albon Williams Carlos Sainz Alex Albon Andrea Kimi Antonelli Ferrari James Sutton James Vowles Miami Motorsport Images

Alex Albon locked down a top-five result at Formula 1's Miami Grand Prix with a pass on Andrea Kimi Antonelli, and faced relatively little competition over the race's second half.

It rather defined the progress that Williams has made this season with its FW47. The Grove-based squad is 17 points clear of Haas in the battle for fifth in the constructors' championship, has scored points in five of the six rounds and, per the supertimes, had the fourth-fastest package in Miami.

Over the past seven years, finishing a race in fifth on merit might have been an unfathomable target for Williams. Its high-water marks since 2018 have usually washed up in attritional, wet-weather races. Now? To borrow a phrase popular around five years ago, this is the "new normal".

Taking the season's overall pace, Williams is still a couple of tenths shy of Ferrari. This is expected to remain the case as Ferrari looks to develop its 2025 car to level out some of the inconsistencies and start challenging Mercedes and Red Bull more regularly, while Williams has been steadfast in its approach to put all of its eggs in the 2026 basket.

But there was something about the Miami circuit that seemed to suit the navy blue automobiles - in particular, the higher-speed parts of the track. This got Williams ahead of Ferrari through the weekend, as the Scuderia couldn't quite make use of its stronger performance in the lower-speed corners.

Beyond that, the FW47 was a lot more consistent in the domain of race pace, as per our graph below.

Ferrari vs Williams distribution of race laps Miami GP (Photo by: Motorsport Network)

At the top end of the lap times, Albon was pretty much level with Leclerc, but the Monegasque had a much greater variance across his overall lap times – hence the box encasing his 25%-75% percentile range is larger.

Further to that, his median, 50% lap time (denoted by the line drawn in the box) is much slower than Albon's, as the Anglo-Thai driver had a greater concentration of quicker laps.

You can see the same with Sainz's plot too; although his best 25% times were slower than Hamilton's, the spread (again) is much reduced - ensuring that his median lap was also considerably better than the Briton's efforts.

In short, the Williams duo's race lap distributions suggest that the better laps were far more repeatable. Ferrari, meanwhile, was struggling for overall consistency through the grand prix.

Sainz torn – "We could do a very big step" with development – but accepts 2026 priority

Carlos Sainz, Williams (Photo by: James Sutton / Motorsport Images)

After qualifying sixth, Carlos Sainz was keen to make the point that Miami had suited Williams quite nicely from the get-go over the weekend. Even with limited practice session opportunities, the Spaniard reckoned that the car "fell in the window" and helped the team sit comfortably in the middle of the Q3 pack.

This level of performance, he admitted, had left him torn: Sainz very much accepts team boss James Vowles' plans to keep building the team and focus on making 2026 a competitive year, but couldn't help wondering how much Williams could rise up the order if it could focus on "two or three areas" before investing fully into next year's car.

"When I see those three tenths to the top [in qualifying], my will to develop this car is there. I perfectly know where this car is, and the moment you put it in the wind tunnel and try and target the two or three areas that I've been telling the team where there's clearly a lot more potential... If the team manages to give me that, I think we could do a very big step.

"But the plan is the plan, we're not going to do that, we're going to focus on next year and put all the eggs in that basket. But obviously that potential that I see – especially only in my sixth race, to be within three tenths of pole is encouraging.

"But we will need to keep it calm. I've asked how much can we do, how much CFD, how much wind tunnel? But there's no [room].

"I like JV because he has a plan and he will commit 100% to it. He trusts his feeling, his plan, his project, and I back him.

Carlos Sainz, Williams (Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images)

"That's why I committed to James as an individual but also as a team to Williams because I see a project and a very clear ambition, very clear targets, and we need to commit to them and stick to them.

"He also promised me this year's car would be an improvement to last year. So far, he's been a man of his word, and I'm glad that's going in the right direction."

You can't help but agree with Sainz; Williams has clearly stepped ahead of the midfield pack, and it could theoretically challenge for a podium or two if it could just find an extra few tenths in the usual in-season development cycle.

But equally, that's not why Sainz joined the team – he saw the long-term project for what it was and chose to enlist. And if Williams ended up in a development dead-end, it's wasted 2026 resources for nothing.

After years of difficulties even scoring points, Williams wants long-term assurance. Putting the focus on 2026 still makes sense; if 2025 was a poor year, then the decision would be easier. Good results can sometimes be a distraction.