How did Williams achieve its first double-points finish with its 500‑part Miami upgrade package?

Williams arrived in Miami with the largest upgrade package it has produced in years — around 500 new parts in total, including the first major round of weight‑saving measures.

In aerodynamic terms, this was effectively the car the team had intended to race in Australia, but delays over the winter meant the Grove outfit only now reached its planned baseline.

The result was immediate and tangible. Williams was not suddenly a frontrunner, but it was back in the fight — competitive in the midfield, operationally sharp, and rewarded with its first double‑points finish of the season as Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon brought the FW48 home in ninth and tenth.

It was a weekend that showed both how far Williams has come, and how far it still needs to go.

The scale of the upgrade — and the fact that it arrived later than intended — underlined how far behind Williams had fallen in the off‑season. But Miami marked the first time the team could combine aerodynamic development with weight reduction, even if it still cannot do both at the pace it would like.

The FW48 behaved more consistently, allowed both drivers to race in the midfield, and gave Williams the platform to capitalise on a chaotic opening lap. Both Sainz and Albon kept clear of trouble, gained positions early, and executed clean, well‑timed pit stops that protected their track position.

There was one flashpoint — Albon’s elbows‑out defence as Max Verstappen carved back through the field — but otherwise it was a calm, controlled Sunday for a team that has spent much of 2026 firefighting.

Alex Albon, who finished tenth, emphasised both the relief and the potential unlocked by the new package: “It has been a difficult start to the season, so it is great to bring home a double points finish, which is a strong result for the team.

"We had a good start and I made up some positions within the first three laps, and the upgrades also seemed to run well allowing us to properly fight in the midfield.

"There is more to unlock with performance and we’ve been experimenting all weekend with setups; there is still a bit to go in terms of understanding the new package, but we’ll keep pushing.

Albon’s comments reflected the team’s cautious optimism: the upgrade works, but the learning curve remains steep "Miami as a track tends to suit us, so we need to turn our attention to Montreal now and extracting the most out of another Sprint weekend," he said.

Carlos Sainz delivered Williams’ best result of the season with ninth place and praised the team’s effort to bring such a large development step.

“Another very solid Sunday. I had a strong start and managed to position myself in contention for points. The pace from there was very good, the race was well-executed, and we were comfortably in the midfield fight.

We’ve made progress over the early break, and the team has worked hard to bring this upgrade to the car. It shows how much we can achieve when we get our heads down, but this is still very far from where we want to be. Our aim is to keep up the good work and try score points regularly.”

Sainz’s consistency has been one of Williams’ few early‑season strengths, and Miami reinforced that trend.

Team Principal James Vowles highlighted both the achievement and the long road ahead: "Well done to the team. It's great to see the hard work of the last five weeks, and the aero package all adding up, putting us in stronger place than we started the season.

"It's still a long road, but the positive news is that there's more performance to come throughout the rest of the season," Viwles noted.

Vowles’ strategic call to pit Albon first — reversing the usual priority — was a decisive moment that protected the team’s double‑points finish.

"Alex and Carlos worked incredibly well as a team today and as a result secured the best positions we could have. We stopped Alex first, which is different to what we would normally do, to ensure that he got ahead of Bearman and secured the points for the team. We have a couple of weeks now until Canada, and I’m looking forward to racing hard for the rest of the season.”