Williams make striking Barcelona test revelation after 'incredibly painful decision'

James Vowles has revealed Williams could have taken part in this week's pre-season test in Barcelona, but were ultimately forced to make a decision he has described as "incredibly painful".

Williams announced on Friday that it would not be involved in the five days of private running at the Circuit de Catalunya, at that stage due to the car failing crash tests, as RacingNews365 understands, relating to the nose box.

Team principal Vowles has confirmed the FW48 has since passed those tests, and conceded it could have joined the other eight teams which have so far conducted running, but felt it was in the best interests of Williams not to do so.

Initially stating that it "clearly wasn't our plan, and it's incredibly painful" not to be in Barcelona, he then explained what led to him making such a pivotal call.

"But I do want it to be acknowledged, it's the result of our determination to push the limits of performance under the new regulations," he said, speaking to select media, including RacingNews365.

"We are transforming here at Williams, and fast, and one of the tasks that has been on my shoulders for a few years is making sure we transform this business at the absolute maximum rate possible.

"In my experience, the only way you achieve that is by pushing the boundaries and limits hard and aggressively and finding your limitations.

"There's no point being just underneath the curve, or well and truly underneath the curve, if you want to transform at speed, you need to find the pain points and put them right very quickly, which is exactly what we're doing.

"I'm confident in our decision to miss Barcelona, and I'm confident it was the right one to prepare for the first test in Bahrain and Melbourne."

'We could have made it - simple as that'

Asked by RacingNews365 whether, after eventually passing the crash tests late in the day, whether Williams could have made it to Barcelona, Vowles acknowledged that to be the case, but made clear why his team has not joined the party.

"In terms of Barcelona, we could have made Barcelona testing - simple as that," he declared. "We could have made it.

"But in doing so, I would have to turn upside down the impact on spares, components and updates across Bahrain, Melbourne and beyond.

"The evaluation of it was that for running in a cold, damp Barcelona, against doing a VTT [Virtual Track Test], against the spare situation, then frankly, there was zero points for running in a shutdown test.

"We made the decision, and I stand by it, that the right thing to do is to make sure we're turning up in Bahrain correctly prepared, and prepared for Melbourne as well."

As a stopgap, Williams has been running on the VTT. Explaining what that entails, Vowles said: "It is pretty much most of the physical car.

"You don't have wings bolted to it, but you have the chassis, the engine, the gearbox. You test, using brake robots, your braking systems at the same time, so you have all of the brakes fitted.

"What you're doing is characterising your cooling system, understanding what that is, running the engine, gearbox, etcetera, under load.

"So you don't have dynamic cornering loads, but you can, for example, mimic having two cars in front of you, one car in front of you, no cars in front of you. You can mimic being in Singapore or Bahrain, or being in four-degree Silverstone weather conditions.

"And what you can do, especially in tandem to those running in Barcelona, is run the same code base that they're running on the PU and the gearbox to understand the effects, but in a more controlled environment than they are.

"So you still get learning on various systems, energy, ECU, as a result of it. It's invaluable learning, but it is not the same as running on track. It's just a good use of time, and that's it."