The 46-year-old, who took over at Williams after 12 years as a strategy guru with Mercedes, said he was determined that the team should do at least as well as their fifth place in the constructors' standings in 2025, their joint-best finish in 10 years.

"Our expectation is 2025 set the baseline. P5 is where I want us to be at our base, and we nudge forward from there," Vowles said.

"But it's exponentially harder, in my experience, being P4, and exponentially harder being P3, P2, P1.

"And I think with what you can see at the moment, the journey to P2, P1 is simply not on the cards for 2026. We have work to do.

"But do I expect that, as a baseline, we perform at least where we were last year? Yes."

Williams won the last of their nine constructors' titles in 1997 when Jacques Villeneuve also won the drivers' world championship.

For the last 20 years, apart from two seasons when Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas lifted them to third, they have struggled to make the top five.

This season they again have Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon at the wheel, with a Mercedes engine powering them, and Vowles is confident that the long-term planning is there to return to the glory days.