Williams revealed their new 2025 automotive in a one-off livery forward of a season they hope the high-profile arrival of Carlos Sainz helps them transfer up the Method 1 grid.
Launching the brand new automotive at Silverstone a day after McLaren turned the primary crew to run a 2025 challenger on the similar venue, Sainz drove the primary lap within the FW47 shortly after 10am on Friday.
The occasion was the primary time that the crew’s spectacular new-look line-up of Sainz and Alex Albon, who will drive afterward Friday, was seen in tandem publicly collectively.
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Talking instantly after driving his first lap, Sainz stated: “I can inform you every thing went high quality, which is sweet information.
“An set up lap of a newly born automotive is at all times a bit tough, however every thing labored because it ought to and now we’re able to get into the run plan.
“I want to present suggestions – the 2 or three issues that I felt that could possibly be improved, or the sensation contained in the cockpit that I wish to speak to them about – then we’ll get the automotive able to run on slicks and possibly begin pushing it little by little.”
Sainz’s FW47 debut in photos
Vowles ‘proud’ of Williams work on FW47
All 10 F1 groups are holding off from revealing their precise 2025 racing liveries till subsequent week’s season launch occasion on the O2 Enviornment in London, which is dwell on Sky Sports activities F1 from 8pm on Tuesday February 18.
Williams crew principal James Vowles stated: “It is an evolution of final 12 months’s automotive. We have now had an affordable winter but it surely’s at all times troublesome to know as a result of the sector as we completed the final race, we certified inside half a second of each other, so the sector is closing and you do not know how good of a winter the others have had.
“What I can say is I am pleased with the work we’ve achieved throughout the winter. While you take a look at the automotive, you may see a thousand particulars which might be one other evolution of what we did earlier than, so there was no bolt left from the place it was, we’re ensuring we constantly transfer the crew ahead.”
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Following the launch of the Williams 2025 automotive, Alex Albon says he believes that the ‘course of Williams goes up’ and divulges the affect he thinks Sainz becoming a member of Williams may have on his profession
Williams earlier this week introduced a brand new title sponsor after signing what the crew described because the “largest partnership deal” of their lengthy historical past, with software program firm Atlassian.
The Grove-based crew, who’re nine-time constructors’ champions in F1 however final gained a title in 1997 and a race in 2012, head into their third season underneath the management of Vowles.
On the crew’s possibilities of attaining a podium end in 2025, Vowles added: “Nothing is unimaginable. There have been just a few surprises final 12 months. We have now much more of the substances accessible to us.
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Williams crew principal James Vowles was in full reward of Sainz’s affect on the crew up to now
“On a traditional race weekend, it will likely be unlikely however there are circumstances that may fall our manner and we’ve two of the strongest drivers that may give it completely every thing, as will I.”
The 45-year-old joined from Mercedes in 2023, the place he had been the Silver Arrows’ technique director, and has set about overhauling Williams and off observe with the goal of catching up with rivals and placing the foundations in place for longer-term success into F1’s new period of guidelines from 2026.
After beating midfield rivals Alpine and Sauber to the signature of Sainz – who was let go by Ferrari so they may herald seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton – Williams have a multiple-race-winning driver of their line-up for the primary time since Felipe Massa in 2017.
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Vowles described the signing of Sainz, who gained 4 Grands Prix at Ferrari and completed fifth in final 12 months’s world championship, on a two-year deal as “robust assertion of intent” when the transfer was introduced final 12 months.
The 30-year-old Spaniard joins Albon, 28, in an skilled and quick line-up that’s already extensively considered the most effective on this season’s much-changed grid.
Albon begins his fourth season on the Williams having persistently proved their lead driver in his time at Grove up to now, however now clearly dealing with his hardest in-house problem but.
Will Williams be again on the up with Sainz-Albon in 2025?
After shifting up from tenth and final within the Constructors’ Championship to a shock seventh in Vowles’ first 12 months in cost, Williams slipped barely backwards to ninth in 2024 and scored 11 fewer factors.
Amid the introduction of latest strategies and dealing practices at their manufacturing facility final winter, the crew skilled a very fraught begin to the 24-race season.
The FW46 was initially off the tempo and chubby, whereas the dearth of a spare chassis for the season’s early flyaway rounds noticed them undergo the embarrassment of being left with just one raceable automotive on the Australian Grand Prix when Alex Albon did important injury to his in a crash throughout Friday apply in Melbourne.
Williams scored solely 4 factors, all by Albon, within the first half of the marketing campaign and finally misplaced persistence with the type of American driver Logan Sargeant, who was dropped in August days after an enormous crash in apply on the Dutch Grand Prix.
Junior driver Franco Colapinto was handed the second seat for the season’s remaining 9 rounds and the Argentine made a swift preliminary acclimatisation to F1, twice scoring factors in his first 4 races – with Albon additionally on the scoreboard once more – as Williams discovered automotive enhancements within the marketing campaign’s remaining months.
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