Williams uses US GP practice to understand why 2026 F1 car “is so bad”

Williams’ poor 2026 F1 is unlikely to drastically change its fortunes at this stage in the year, meaning this season’s race weekends are now about understanding why it’s all gone so wrong.

The Grove team has scored only 12 points this season and is currently ninth in the constructor standings, ahead of only Aston Martin and new entry Cadillac.

Williams had effectively sacrificed its 2025 season in order to try to have as good a start to the new technical era as possible in 2026, but it has not worked as planned despite having the strongest power unit.

The Circuit of the Americas, which is hosting the US Grand Prix this weekend, is one of the most technical layouts on the calendar. Not only is it a long lap at 3.4 miles, but it also has a variety of corners: long corners, short ones, fast ones, flowing ones, slow ones – it’s all there.

For Williams, it’s a problematic mix. The longer the corner, the more its car suffers this season and, while there are short corners at COTA, the majority are extended, especially in the first and final sectors.

As such, the team knew ahead of the weekend that the US Grand Prix would likely be one of its toughest of the season, so planned in advance to try to run some tests in anticipation of 2027.

“We spent most of today learning and looking to the future, working as a team to collect some data both for the remainder of the season but also very much looking forward to next year’s car and our development programme on that,” said chief engineer Paul Williams after FP2 in Texas.

“We know the limitations of this car and struggle on the medium- and high-speed corners, so are exposed here in sector one.”

Carlos Sainz echoed these thoughts when he spoke to broadcast media after the race.

“Very tough,” he summarised at the end of the day, speaking to Sky Sports’ Craig Slater. 

“A bit like expected, really, because the moment we have long duration corners and medium-to-high-speed, we know this year we are pretty much nowhere to be seen. 

“So, braced for a bit of a tough weekend. We will use it to learn as much as possible from setup and car understanding, which we have definitely done some tests today that might give us some information for the future, but for the rest we don’t expect any miracles going into the weekend.”

Sainz added: “More than parts for next year it is mapping this year’s car properly to know why it is so bad so we can understand what to do better for next year.”

Sainz “in two minds” about bumps

Ahead of the weekend, the Circuit of the Americas copped some flak for the bumpy state of its track surface, in particular from Max Verstappen and Lando Norris.

After the first day of running, Sainz admitted that the combination of COTA’s bumps and its high-speed turns are likely to make for a physically demanding race on Sundays, but also felt that he didn’t want to over-criticise a feature of the circuit that he deems characterful.

“[The race will be] very physically tough because there are so many bumps and so much high-speed,” Sainz said.

“The combination of bumps and high-speed… In this year’s cars you can push a bit harder in the race.

“So, it will be definitely a physical race, but it’s true also that I like tracks with a bit of character and these challenging conditions give it a bit of character. So, a bit in two minds.”