{"id":841867,"date":"2026-08-03T13:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T13:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/841867\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T13:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T13:11:10","slug":"williams-going-backwards-guenther-steiner-questions-james-vowles-after-f1-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/841867\/","title":{"rendered":"Williams going backwards? Guenther Steiner questions James Vowles after F1 decline"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guenther Steiner has joked James Vowles cannot be judged as Williams<\/a> team principal until he has finished reading the \u201cinbox\u201d full of engineering solutions to the FW48\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

According to the former F1 team boss, after promising a better F1 2026, Williams has instead gone \u201cbackwards\u201d.<\/p>\n

Guenther Steiner delivers brutal Williams verdict<\/p>\n

Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google<\/a> to your favourites list for news you can trust.<\/p>\n

Williams<\/a> enjoyed one of its strongest seasons in recent years in 2025, with the Grove team tipped to build on that this year after focusing last year\u2019s car development almost entirely on preparing for 2026.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s plans began to unravel during the pre-season when Williams missed the opening test due to a delay in the build of the car, and was also late to the track in Bahrain for the first official pre-season outing.<\/p>\n

On the back foot from the offset, Williams is lagging behind its fellow Mercedes\u2019 customer teams with 11 points compared to Alpine\u2019s 61 and McLaren\u2019s 220.<\/p>\n

The team suffered a further blow in Hungary when it dropped behind Aston Martin on the track as the slowest of the sport\u2019s established teams. Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon were half a second down on Aston Martin\u2019s Fernando Alonso.<\/p>\n

Williams, though, has yet to introduce its B-spec car.<\/p>\n

Reducing the weight of the FW48 is a big issue for Williams, with Vowles having told PlanetF1.com and other media at the Australian Grand Prix that his \u201cinbox is all of the engineering steps to not just bring it down, but actually be underweight by a good amount\u201d.<\/p>\n

The first steps towards that will be unveiled in Zandvoort, with the FW48\u2019s upgrades \u201cincluding weight reduction\u201d, before an \u201calmost entirely new car\u201d takes to the track in Baku.<\/p>\n

Then, and only then, says Steiner, can Vowles\u2019 leadership be judged.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much as I think he\u2019s not doing a good job, I think you need to at least give him time to read all his emails, which he got at the beginning of the year,\u201d Steiner joked in response to Vowles\u2019 \u201cinbox\u201d claim.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe knows what to do. He just didn\u2019t have time to read them. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, let him read his emails. Find a solution by the end of the year. If he hasn\u2019t got to all the emails by the end of the year, then let him go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steiner, though, isn\u2019t foreseeing glory and greatness for Williams this season even with the B-spec car.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019ve got a big chance to pick up two points here, two points there to get to 11 [points] because I don\u2019t think that Williams is going to pick up any more points,\u201d he predicted.<\/p>\n

The former Haas boss admitted he was disappointed with Williams\u2019 performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey promised us at the beginning of the season, \u2018We will be back; we know exactly what to do.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cGuess what? <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going backwards instead of forwards at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steiner isn\u2019t the only person concerned about Williams\u2019 season going forward.<\/p>\n

Outqualified by Aston Martin in Hungary, Albon admitted the AMR26 upgrade package was something that Williams could only \u201cdream\u201d of.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what kind of upgrade that Aston had, but I could only dream of that,\u201d Albon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could only dream of an upgrade like that \u2013 was it net, possibly, the gain, one and a half, two seconds? I mean, fair play to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to be fighting with them in some races purely because of the straightline speed, but I can tell you in the corners they\u2019re considerably faster than us.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s eye-opening because, also for us, we know what our Baku upgrade is. It\u2019s not that. So we have work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp<\/a> to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.<\/p>\n

You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channel<\/a> for exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!<\/p>\n

Read Next:\u00a0James Vowles points finger at Fernando Alonso over Sainz-Piastri clash<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guenther Steiner has joked James Vowles cannot be judged as Williams team principal until he has finished reading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,3552,818,21764,44,17165,85,13852,819],"class_list":["post-841867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-guenther-steiner","tag-home-page","tag-james-vowles","tag-news","tag-popular","tag-sports","tag-uncategorized","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}