Williams’ Singapore DSQ stings as Vowles flags “systems” failure behind DRS breach
Williams didn’t lose Singapore qualifying to pace or a driver error. They lost it in the margins, on a piece of kit that didn’t agree with the FIA’s.
Both FW47s were thrown out of qualifying at Marina Bay after post-session checks found the upper rear wing element, with DRS open, exceeded the 85 mm slot gap limit at the outer edges. Williams had run their own measurements pre-qualifying and believed they were in the clear. The stewards’ gauge said otherwise. By the book, that’s illegal, and the penalties fell hard.
The team got dispensation to start the race. Carlos Sainz, who’d originally qualified 13th, was shuffled to 18th on the grid and ground out P10 by the flag. Alex Albon took the more painful route — pit-lane start after Williams opted for set-up changes — and finished 14th. Two different battles, same headline: this should’ve been more.
James Vowles didn’t duck it. In his post-race debrief, The Vowles Verdict, the Williams boss put it bluntly: the problem wasn’t a crafty interpretation; it was process. “We were legal across pretty much most of the span of the wing,” he said. “It passed in most locations apart from the very edge. But irrespective, that’s still illegal. When we dig down underneath all of that, we can track it to a number of systems and processes that simply weren’t in place or up to date — and even the tool we had didn’t properly mirror the tool the FIA had.”
That’s the bit that should grate in Grove. The measurement of an open DRS slot gap is one of the sport’s most basic scrutineering checks, performed countless times over a season. When your own gauge doesn’t match the FIA’s, you’re playing compliance roulette. It only takes a few extra millimetres at the extremity of a wing to get bounced out of a session, and that’s exactly what happened.
Vowles framed it as a broader reality check. “Singapore was a reminder we have a long way to go before we’re at a championship level,” he said. He’s been consistent on this since arriving in 2023: Williams’ tools, software and factory workflows lagged after years of underinvestment, and modernising under a cost cap is a grind. Dorilton’s ownership has pushed upgrades, but capital expenditure remains a political football, with rivals historically wary of letting legacy teams spend their way forward. Progress has been made on a sliding scale for CapEx, but the race to catch up is exactly that — a race.
There’s also the human side, and Vowles’ tone carried a bit of that. This wasn’t finger-pointing at a single mechanic or a rogue build. He was talking about architecture — the calibration of measurement tools, the sign-off gates, the test parity with the FIA, the kind of checklists that mean you don’t find out in parc fermé that your wing is a shade too spicy at the tips. When those systems don’t line up, weekends unravel. And in Singapore, a track where qualifying position is gold, Williams paid.
From the cockpit, the cost was obvious. Sainz had the pace to be pesky in the midfield and turned a compromised start into a point. Albon’s pit-lane launch, coupled with the set-up gamble, left him swamped in traffic and outside the points. For a team that’s scrapping for every finish in 2025, that’s the difference between a decent Sunday and a forgettable one.
The silver lining? It’s fixable. Matching measurement tools to the FIA’s spec isn’t a moonshot project. Tightening build tolerances at the wing’s outer span and hardening the sign-off process are the kind of “right now” actions teams implement within days, not weeks. The lesson is harsh but useful: you can’t give away free penalties in an era this tight.
Vowles will wear some heat for this because he invites it. He’s been transparent about the rebuild and willing to bring fans into the messy parts of modern F1 team-building: the legacy equipment that’s “20 years out of date,” the manufacturing bottlenecks, the software that needs love. That candour is refreshing. It also raises the bar. When you say you’re building a contender, you can’t be caught out by a measuring stick.
Williams leave Singapore with a point, a black eye, and a to-do list that suddenly has “calibrate the calibrators” at the top. That’s not glamorous. But if this team’s climb is going to stick, the next time the FIA slides a gauge under the FW47’s rear wing, there can’t be daylight between the two answers.
