Williams are set to benefit significantly from fielding their reserve driver in practice sessions at the next two Grands Prix. Luke Browning will drive in free practice one for the team at both the Barcelona-Catalunya and Austrian Grands Prix, making Williams one of the first teams to give a rookie track time this season.
Rookie Driver Opportunity
Aston Martin gave Jak Crawford the chance to drive Fernando Alonso's car in FP1 at the Japanese Grand Prix in April, while Cadillac confirmed that Colton Herta would drive in an F1 session for the first time in Barcelona. Williams confirmed today that Browning will join Herta on track.
The British driver is Williams' first-choice reserve driver and also handles significant simulator duties to aid car development. He has never raced in F1 before, making him eligible for the four rookie FP1 appearances each team must provide per season under current rules.
Fulfilling Requirements
Williams will fulfill half of their 2026 requirement by fielding Browning, 24, for the first hour of running in both Barcelona and Spielberg this month. By giving their simulator driver real-world experience, Browning told Express Sport that both he and the team will benefit massively from comparing his on-track experience with simulator feedback.
He said: "Probably the thing that I'm most excited for, is getting back to the factory after doing the FP1 to do the correlation on the sim, to see how close it has been and seeing if I can help develop. Probably the biggest tool that we have nowadays is to be able to develop our offline sim and our simulator to then get the car in a better place, but not only that, predict the car for the future."
Future Development
Browning added: "Some of the work that I'm doing on the simulator now, developing the offline sim, is going to help the car two, three years from now, which hopefully I'm driving. I'm really enjoying doing the simulator work at the moment. Obviously, it was the reason why I actually came to Williams from Mercedes at the time, doing simulator work for them."
Team principal James Vowles brought Browning with him from Mercedes when he took the top Williams job. Browning has since graduated from Formula 3 to Formula 2 and now races in the Japanese Super Formula series, one of the top open-wheel championships behind F1. He is grateful for Vowles' continued support.
Browning said: "I was James's first signing into this team, essentially. I think within the first couple weeks I was the first one he brought into the team, so I feel very proud to almost be James' boy in that way. I'm very grateful to be in the team, to see it grow, and just seriously get my head down and I'm just motivated to carry on pushing the team forward."
