The Grove team endured another disappointing weekend at Silverstone, where its latest upgrades failed to deliver the expected improvement.
It continued a downward trend for Williams in 2026, with the team scoring only 11 points after nine races compared to 54 at the same stage of the 2025 season.
The team sits eighth in the constructors’ championship heading into Belgium.
Speaking on the latest episode of The Vowles Verdict, the Williams chief admitted the team was not adding performance to its car quickly enough.
“I would say right now what’s clear is our rate of bringing performance to the car – which is a little bit nuanced in how I mean that – is not at the rate required in order for us to move forward,” Vowles said.
Williams introduced a new front wing at the British Grand Prix after bringing forward an upgrade originally planned for Spa-Francorchamps.
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However, the package failed to produce the improvement indicated by the team’s wind tunnel and simulator work.
Vowles said Williams would now examine its development across the entire opening phase of the season rather than concentrating solely on its Silverstone performance.
“Step one of all of that is to make sure that we take time to fully understand not just what we’ve done in Silverstone, but really what we’ve done across the entire season,” he said.
“How quickly we evaluate that, and typically I would expect that to be done within the next two weeks, then defines what we do in Spa, what we do in Budapest, what we do across the remainder of the season and what we do going into next year at the same time.”
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Carlos Sainz also voiced concerns after the British Grand Prix, having climbed into the top 10 on the opening lap before slipping backwards as Williams struggled against its midfield rivals.
“Concerning, frustrating because it starts to be a bad trend this year that we don’t seem to really find a lot of lap time when the upgrades are coming,” Sainz told media after the race.
“We need to have a good sit-down now this week and analyse what’s happening because unfortunately, we’ve shed a lot of weight out of the car by now.
“But the gap to the front keeps increasing and the gap to the leader of the midfield keeps increasing.
“So we don’t seem to be finding the lap time that we expected in the winter.”
Williams began the season with a significantly overweight car, but reducing that deficit has not delivered the performance gain Sainz expected.
The Spaniard said the team was further from the pace at Silverstone than it had been with a heavier car earlier in the campaign, leaving Williams needing to determine where aerodynamic performance was being lost.
Vowles said the review would separate the areas Williams understands from the unresolved problems limiting its progress before the team returns at Spa.
“I enjoy going there because it is a challenge that’s unlike most of the other circuits on the calendar,” he said.
“And it’s an opportunity for us to reset and come back swinging.”
Free Practice 1 for the Belgian Grand Prix gets underway on Friday at 9:30pm AEST.
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