{"id":910589,"date":"2026-09-26T16:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T16:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/910589\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T16:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T16:52:09","slug":"james-vowles-hails-williams-factory-effort-after-major-baku-f1-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/910589\/","title":{"rendered":"James Vowles hails Williams factory effort after major Baku F1 upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/williams\/13\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Williams<\/a> team principal James Vowles has praised the Grove outfit&#8217;s relentless factory effort to deliver a major upgrade package for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, despite the team only walking away with one point from the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Williams arrived at the Baku City Circuit with a substantial update, which included two new chassis, an extensive weight-saving programme and a revised aerodynamic set-up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;First and foremost, thank you to everyone who has been working diligently day and night to achieve the update that we brought here this weekend,&#8221; Vowles explained in an Instagram video.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s no mean feat to bring two new chassis, take a large amount of weight out of a package, and an aerodynamic update at the same time, deliver all of that to Baku.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And we started speaking about this a few months ago, but it&#8217;s really fantastic to see it delivered here this weekend.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The upgraded package showed promise in qualifying with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/carlos-sainz\/15916\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Carlos Sainz<\/a> progressing to Q3, but the grand prix proved more challenging. Sainz managed to score one point with a 10th-place finish, although at the time of writing, he is under investigation for an alleged practice start infringement. His team-mate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/alex-albon\/109625\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Alex Albon<\/a> crashed on lap 31.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can see in qualifying, we&#8217;re able to achieve a good result, but the race was really up and down, and at certain points, with Carlos, for example, we really couldn&#8217;t find the performance that was there in qualifying,&#8221; Vowles continued.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think we have some direction on that already, but well done to Carlos for fighting to the very end, for that point.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With Alex, it&#8217;s a real shame. He was driving incredibly well. A gust of wind fundamentally meant that he was unable to slow the countdown sufficiently and went into the wall. And that is just a factor of Baku, it&#8217;s a street circuit, and these sorts of elements get punished quite hard.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll get that car rebuilt for Malaysia, which is taking place [next week]. [Baku was] the first of a triple-header. But as I say, really solid start, but we have work to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>            We want your opinion!<\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-auto\">What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"#\" class=\"ms-link text-link font-bold\">Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-1 text-body\">&#8211; The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Williams team principal James Vowles has praised the Grove outfit&#8217;s relentless factory effort to deliver a major upgrade&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[77894,77895,49,48,578,576,577,314523,82,4962,1196],"class_list":["post-910589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-azerbaijan-gp","tag-baku-city-circuit","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-james-vowles-hails-williams-factory-effort-after-major-baku-f1-upgrade","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}