How resurgent Williams aims to avoid repeat of Brazil F1 wet-race fiasco

As Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz celebrated qualifying sixth and 10th at Albert Park in the 2025 Formula 1 opener, the joy at more evidence of the Williams team’s revival was tempered by the forecast of rain for race day. 

Williams may be a quintessentially British team but this wasn’t a case of it indulging itself in that famous British habit of talking about the weather.

Analysis of the long runs in practice have suggested Williams is ‘best of the rest’ outside the top four teams. Albon also confirmed after qualifying that the Grove-based outfit had focused on race pace rather than one-lap performance.

But all this assumes dry running, and Sunday’s forecast is so unequivocal about the likelihood of rain that a story briefly circulated the paddock that contingency plans were being drawn up to delay the race start by up to an hour if conditions dictate. Not only will wet weather introduce a randomising element to the grand prix for all runners, last year it exposed a particular weakness on the Williams car.

At the start of the season, the production delays meant many elements of the FW46 which should have been made of composites had to be replaced by metal equivalents, magnifying the effects of damage and frequently leaving Williams short of spare parts.

Availability of new components continued to be an issue after a mid-season car upgrade, exacerbated by a series of crashes late on which required the team to fly more personnel to Abu Dhabi.

While Williams made a point of launching the FW47 early this season to demonstrate publicly that it has consigned these organisational issues to history, there was another problem to resolve.

Both the team and its drivers have been cagey about the specifics of the brake issues that affected its cars in the wet last year, most notably at November’s Brazilian Grand Prix which Albon was forced to miss after crashing at the Senna ‘S’ during the delayed qualifying session.

“Immediately when I hit the brake pedal, there was a beep in my ear, which normally means there’s a failure. And then rear locking and a big crash,” Albon said at the time.

Rain throughout the weekend meant qualifying was delayed until Sunday morning, and Franco Colapinto had already crashed in the other Williams, so there was no chance of repairing Albon’s car for the race. Immediately before the shunt, Albon had complained that his wheels were locking up unpredictably under braking.

The problem is believed to be unrelated to the electronics glitch, which caused erstwhile team-mate Logan Sargeant to spin off and require a steering wheel change in the Bahrain Grand Prix earlier that year.

“We have a decent car in the wet, I think,” said Albon after qualifying in Melbourne. “It doesn’t always show – or rather it’s a bit circuit-specific.

James Vowles, Team Principal Williams with Alex Albon, William

Photo by: Williams

“We fixed some of the brake issues we had in Brazil. We made some decisions this weekend to make sure we don’t have the same issues in case it rains, so I’m confident we can get on top of it [racing in the wet].”

This is another example of the wider changes rippling through Williams under team boss James Vowles. As a former strategy engineer, Vowles well knows the importance of leaving nothing to chance, and of factoring in every eventuality.

He will also be well-versed in the maxim, popularly if incorrectly attributed to Albert Einstein, that the definition of insanity is to repeat a failed course of action while expecting a different result.

Incremental progress, identifying the small but fixable problems rather than trying to change everything at once, has been the hallmark of the past couple of years at Williams HQ.

As Vowles said in the team principals’ press conference in Melbourne: “There’s no one thing that just suddenly switches a car on and makes it better.”

Rain on race day for the Australian Grand Prix could afford just the opportunity to demonstrate the power of learning from mistakes.