James Vowles admits overweight Williams needs April break to recover

Williams Formula 1 team principal James Vowles has claimed that the Grove outfit will need "every single hour" of the April break to get "back on the front foot".

F1 confirmed during the Chinese Grand Prix weekend that the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix will not take place in April due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Teams such as Williams, which has had a difficult start to the 2026 season, will be hoping to make the most of the time back at the factory.

"Every single hour of that break we need in order to get ourselves back on the front foot by the time we come back to Miami," the Williams team chief said during The Vowles Verdict.

"Clearly, we haven't started the season where we wanted to. So that period for us is about taking stock of what we actually really can change. Now, without attrition, we can count on the fact that production can be moved towards future performance.

"Some of that may come in Miami, some of that after that."

Carlos Sainz, Williams

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

He added: "It's no secret that we're overweight. Again, the developments will be in that period of time, making sure that we're able to reduce the mass in the car in a sensible fashion.

"We've gone through, by that point, three grands prix, but there's never enough time after the event to go through every single tiny bit of data and understand really what we should have done in hindsight and what programmes we want to kick off in the future. And this provides us a good time to do that.

"The drivers will come back here to the UK, and we'll run our simulator on basically every single day of that as much as possible. We'll complete pitstop practice with the crew back here as many days that we can as well. So it'll be more about what do we fit in and what will provide the most bang for buck."

Williams currently sits ninth in the constructors' standings with two points.