Williams have yet to pick up a point in the early stages of the 2026 Formula 1 season, and their dissatisfaction with the information from Mercedes about their power unit is growing.
The Australian Grand Prix didn’t provide much hope either, with Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz finishing down in P12 and P15.
Sainz missed out on qualifying entirely due to a technical problem, while Albon started in 15th. Even with several retirements elsewhere, neither driver was ever in contention for points.
Sainz admitted there was never an opportunity for Williams to score points. Given he was on the podium at the end of the 2025 season, that’s a significant step backward.
Team boss James Vowles is already feeling pressure from investors. But attention is also turning towards Mercedes and issues surrounding their new power unit.
Williams frustrated by limited engine information from Mercedes
Williams left the Australian Grand Prix without a point, and there’s growing frustration within the team over how little information they’ve received from Mercedes about the new power unit.
Speaking on The Race F1 Podcast, journalist Scott Mitchel-Malm didn’t hold back in his assessment of Williams’ weekend, calling it a poor showing.
“Yeah, if you just want a word on Williams, it’s ‘rubbish’. It’s just nowhere near where it should be,” he said.
“The car’s slow, it’s bad in qualifying, it’s uncompetitive in the race, it’s clearly overweight.
While Williams are reportedly unhappy with the level of transparency from Mercedes regarding the engine situation. But Mitchel-Malm feels their immediate focus should be on resolving internal issues rather than looking externally for answers.
“You can’t be the fourth of the four Mercedes teams and be complaining that you’re not getting exactly what you need out of that,” he continued. “Focus on the problems closer to home first. Especially after all of that noise about how important 2026 was.
“I don’t really even care that there is massive potential in this package or whatever and that there could be big gains if they just get weight out over the first few races.”
McLaren share Williams’ frustrations over lack of transparency from Mercedes on power unit
Right now, there’s a noticeable gap between Mercedes and their three customer teams. McLaren have picked up 10 points, while Alpine managed to grab a top-10 finish through Pierre Gasly.
The power unit plays its part, but it’s no guarantee of results. Still, McLaren boss Andrea Stella has echoed some of the concerns James Vowles raised about how Mercedes have handled things recently.
Vowles had already said before the race: “What Mercedes are doing on the power unit is something that caught us off guard.”
“It took qualifying for us to really see just how off the pace we are. In that regard, that’s probably three-tenths [of deficit on the engine side] – something in that ballpark.”
Speaking after the race, Stella backed up what was coming out of Williams by telling Sky Sports: “The discussion with HPP (Mercedes High Performance Powertrains) about having more information has been going on for weeks because, even in testing, we were pretty much going on track, run the car, look at the data, ‘oh, that’s what we have. Good, now we react to what we have’.
“That’s not how you work in Formula 1. In Formula 1, what happens on track you simulate. You know what is happening; you know what you are programming; you know how the car is going to behave.
“So I have to say since we are a customer team [of Mercedes], this is the first time that we feel we are on the back foot even when it comes to the ability to predict how the car will behave and anticipate how we can improve it.”
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