Similarly to McLaren’s launch and shakedown yesterday, Williams have unveiled their 2025 car on track in a camo style livery, featuring the branding of their now numerous partners. With the F1-75 Live launch and livery reveal event scheduled for next week, teams are taking to using temporary testing liveries to shakedown their cars this year.
The FW47 was driven for two laps around the shortened Silverstone layout by Carlos Sainz who said everything was “all good”, but they’ll run a full 200km filming day run plan for the rest of the day, likely around the full length circuit with both drivers.
Williams are continuing their rebuild phase ahead of the new 2026 regulations, and there was a feeling of this evolution through their event but also in the number of partners on the car, including their new title partner Atlassian.
James Vowles described the partnership as a “challenger” to others and as “the biggest” the team has had, but maintained his view that the team are putting their focus on the future.
“You’re going to see us progress forwards but what I’ve always said is we’ve put our focus into 2026, ‘27, and ‘28.”
Vowles has worked on upgrading the infrastructure of the team as part of this, “We were 700 people, now over 1050 today and we’re not finished yet,” he said. “There’s a lot more in the pipeline. That’s all happening in the background.”
“What I want to make sure that we’re doing is not just the short term, little bit of gain at the cost of the long term. We’re here to make sure we’re back to winning championships, to do that it will take a little bit more time but that’s the investment we’re doing.”
Even so, asked if he can see the team challenging for podiums if the circumstances arise this year, he said, “we have a lot more of the ingredients” to make it possible.
Carlos Sainz has joined the team from Ferrari for this season and has his first experience with the team at the post-season test in December last year. Alex Albon is entering his fourth year with the team, having joined early on in the rebuild phase, and said this development has “been a long time coming”.
Williams’ FW47 livery will be launched at the F1-75 Live event on February 18th before pre-season testing commences on February 26th.
