Williams boss, James Vowles addresses media speculation over issues with the team's 2026 contender, the FW48.

Having completely skipped the Bahrain shakedown there have been reports of the car failing three crash tests and being found to be 20 - 30 kilograms overweight.

"There's no knowledge of the weight until we get to Bahrain in terms of understanding where it is," he insisted in a media call as the Barcelona shakedown came to the end of its third day.

"There's not a single person that will truly know it," he continued. "It's impossible to know it, because you need the car together without sensors in the right form. And that doesn't exist today.

"If we end up being over the weight target then from that point along, it'll be an aggressive programme to get it off," he said. "But I think right now, anything that you're seeing as murmurings in the media are murmurings. I'll come out and explain to everyone at the point where we know that, that isn't today."

In reaction to the crash test murmurings, he said: "We have absolutely pushed the boundaries of what we're doing in certain areas, and one of those is in certain corresponding tests that go with it", adding that "those were only a blip in the grand scheme of things".

"They are one item out of quite a few that were pushing us absolutely beyond the limit of what we can achieve in the space of time that we have available to us," he said.

Referring to the decision to skip the Barcelona shakedown, and instead opting for an advanced virtual test track (VTT) programme, he insisted: "We could have made it, but in doing so, I would have to turn upside down the impact on spares, components and updates across Bahrain, Melbourne and beyond.

"And the evaluation of it was that for running in a cold, damp Barcelona, against doing a VTT test, against the spare situation, and frankly, there was zero points for running in a shakedown test, we made the decision.

"And I stand by it, that the right thing to do is to make sure we're turning up at Bahrain correctly prepared and prepared in Melbourne as well."

When he decides it's time to quite the sport, Mr Vowles should definitely consider a career in politics, for somehow he has managed to raise the issue of media murmurings without actually answering the questions.

In a subsequent video posted on social media, a somewhat anxious looking Vowles told fans: "We are ready to run the official test in Bahrain, and we will carry out a promotional filming day ahead of it.

"In the meantime we are carrying out an alternative test programme here in the UK, including what we call a VTT, a virtual track test. The car's on there now, it's been there a few days and it will be on there for a few more days.

"It's a physical car," he continued, "the real car, the engine, the gearbox, are all bolted to it and it's put through its paces on a rig, and provides valuable engineering data.

"The car is there as we speak and will continue running tomorrow.

"We cannot wait to get on track, there's a lot to look forward to in 2026."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by ffracer, 13 hours ago

"Wow. I couldn’t follow all that and Pitpass is legendary for being thorough...

In short, I’ve had a car on a seven-post rig and I can tell you that it can measure corner weight precisely, as it runs, purposely, to see if there is a suspension issue or the chassis is flexing amongst other things .... If Vowles is saying that they can’t measure the weight is because they are running it without bodywork? No fuel? Basically, a lot of tap dancing here and it doesn’t add up. Sorry.

I will wait to see how their actual real racecar fares in the Bahrain test, in two weeks."

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2. Posted by RF1200520062007, 13 hours ago

"Good PR but for sure things are not going as planned. Not knowing the weight of the car by 20kg is very surprising! And cannot be the case… hundreds of millions of dollars for thousands of seconds gap between cars and we are told the team cannot add the parts and fluids? Common. Wish them good luck and yes it’s a long way to Melbourne. But missing an initial milestones is revealing."

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Vowles reacts to "media murmurings"

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