Williams drivers' fears realised as team is only quicker than Haas: Practice data

Williams’ resurgence was one of the most noteworthy developments of the first third of the 2025 season.

The team which finished second from bottom in the points last year arrived in Spain fifth in the standings. Carlos Sainz Jnr and Alexander Albon have scored points in all of the last four rounds.

However the pair expected the Circuit de Catalunya would expose a weakness in their FW47. Friday’s running indicated that concern was well-founded.

Teams’ 2024 performance in context

Last year the Barcelona track was one of the weakest for Williams. In qualifying they were half a second off the next-slowest car. Nor was this a particularly strong track for another team that has impressed so far in 2025: Racing Bulls (formerly RB).

Teams’ progress vs 2024

In the hot conditions at the circuit today, no team lapped quicker than they managed in 2024. Racing Bulls and Williams got closest.

As usual, Red Bull were among those furthest from their 2024 pace. It’s striking, then, they were quicker relative to their rivals on Friday, Max Verstappen lapping just three tenths of a second off Oscar Piastri. However he was also much further ahead of team mate Yuki Tsunoda for this stage in the weekend, which appeared to cause some concern on the other side of the Red Bull garage.

Teams’ 2024 and 2025 times

Despite being closer to the pace than they were last year, Williams’ ranking at the end of Friday is little better: ninth instead of tenth. The gaps are closer than last year, however, so a few tenths of a second could gain them a lot of ground.

On Thursday, before running began, Alexander Albon predicted this would be one of the toughest venues for the team. After Friday’s running Carlos Sainz Jnr said their concerns had been realised.

“It’s tricky, a bit like we expected,” he told the official Formula 1 channel, “coming into a track that, looking at the corners, is exactly the kind of corners where we knew we were going to struggle with the characteristics of our car.

“Right from the start in FP1 I felt how tricky it was. We tried to do some set-up changes for FP2 that seemed to go in a good direction but for some reason we still didn’t find much lap time and we are in that battle towards the back of the midfield.

“So we need to see how to take another step, because clearly we are not looking like a Q3 contender.”

First and second practice times

Besides the Racing Bulls, Pierre Gasly’s Alpine and Nico Hulkenberg’s Sauber look best-placed to capitalise on Williams’ challenging weekend.

“For sure I don’t think we’re going to see a performance we saw in Miami and Imola, even if we [find] a good direction with the set-up tonight,” Sainz concluded. “We seem to be one second off the pace every lap that we do here.

“So there’s a lot of things to understand and things to work on, but we don’t give up. We will try different things with both cars, Alex and I, for tomorrow and see if we can find something that gives us a bit of an edge.”

P.
#
Driver
Team
FP1 time
FP2 time
Gap
Laps

1
81
Oscar Piastri
McLaren-Mercedes
1’14.294
1’12.760

2
63
George Russell
Mercedes
1’14.751
1’13.046
0.286
64

3
1
Max Verstappen
Red Bull-Honda RBPT
1’14.085
1’13.070
0.310
48

4
4
Lando Norris
McLaren-Mercedes
1’13.718
1’13.070
0.310
60

5
16
Charles Leclerc
Ferrari
1’14.238
1’13.260
0.500
64

6
12
Andrea Kimi Antonelli
Mercedes
1’15.369
1’13.298
0.538
62

7
14
Fernando Alonso
Aston Martin-Mercedes
1’14.798
1’13.301
0.541
48

8
10
Pierre Gasly
Alpine-Renault
1’14.746
1’13.385
0.625
58

9
6
Isack Hadjar
Racing Bulls-Honda RBPT
1’14.605
1’13.400
0.640
55

10
30
Liam Lawson
Racing Bulls-Honda RBPT
1’14.339
1’13.494
0.734
57

11
44
Lewis Hamilton
Ferrari
1’14.096
1’13.533
0.773
58