New Williams team principal James Vowles walked through the doors of the team’s headquarters in Oxfordshire last month well aware of the task at hand as he took on the role.
Founded in 1977, Williams went on to become one of the most successful teams in Formula 1 history. Clay Regazzoni claimed the team’s first grand prix win in 1979, and the first of nine constructors’ titles came a year later. Only Ferrari have been champions more times.
But Williams last won a race in 2012 and since coming third in the standings in 2015 has primarily been on a downwards trajectory with its form. They came last in 2018 with just seven points, and have struggled to improve since.
The 2019 campaign was a disaster, the car not even ready in time for pre-season testing. In 2020 neither George Russell or Nicholas Latifi scored and Williams finished last in the constructors’ championship for the third season running. Amid growing financial pressures exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Williams family was forced to sell up, and Dorilton Capital took over.
“The team has over the last 15 years been through a tremendous amount of difficulty financially and otherwise, and it survived through all of that,” Vowles said ahead of his first race in charge, adding there are “stark differences between where we are today and where we need to be in the future”.
Vowles spent 20 years at Mercedes before taking over the role of team principal just a few days before 2023 pre-season testing. He hopes his experience means he knows exactly where Williams needs to improve and he did not sugar-coat the scale of the challenge they face, dismissing any ideas of a quick turnaround in their fortunes.
“To break into the top three is incredibly difficult,” he said. “They have resources beyond your dreams. They have experience beyond your dreams. They have the best people on the grid.
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“As you become better and better at what you do, you also become more and more cost-efficient. I don’t mean through other external techniques, I mean just simply your composite production. So all of those additional costs that will be borne by teams that perhaps are fourth and backwards.”
His goal for the team is to make incremental gains in performance. “I think certainly a realistic step for this organisation is, first and foremost, to make sure that every year we are just edging forward. That has to be dream number one.
“Dream number two is we have to set a sensible period of time in the future – and it’s years – where we start to actually break into sixth, fifth, fourth place.”
But further progress will depend on the future of F1’s rules. “From then onwards, the sport really will probably have to have some level of political change to allow, properly, teams to break into the top three.”
F1 introduced rules in 2021 which vary how much aerodynamic development each team may conduct based on their finishing position in the previous year’s championship. Williams finished last in 2022, therefore gets the highest allocation this year. However this may not go far enough, says Vowles.
“Where the top three are at the moment is such a strength that even with ATR [aerodynamic testing restrictions] catch-up, it’s very difficult to make up for lost time in that regard.
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“What I really mean by that is that I think more components that have been shared between organisations, more major components that take away perhaps some of the locked-in gain, that will help balance things.”
While the much discussed cost cap has reduced the spending deficit teams like Williams have to the top teams, it has other less helpful repercussions, such as constraints on capital expenditure on fixed assets.
“The cost cap is a limiting factor in all of these things simply because it puts us in a position where there’s a limited amount of CapEx [capital expenditure],” Vowles explained. “It won’t be enough to spend our way to success, as I would probably define it.”
It will take time “to get some of the core facilities to the level required” and “that’s not the work of six months or 12 months” but rather longer term goals.
“Further to that, as I’ve discussed externally, we are in a position where we are lacking key technical personnel and the team are definitely under strain at the moment to ensure that we’re filling those voids as best we can. So the pathway is not one of months but years.”
Vowles described the scale of the task ahead of him as being “about what I expected, but maybe a soupçon of being slightly worse”.
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“Any organisation – irrespective of whether it is a F1 team or otherwise – cannot be a high-performing outfit if you take money away from it and basically have such disruption across a number of years that you end up in a poor situation. And that’s where Williams stands. It’s not for lack of good people. It’s just simply a lack of stability.”
High on the list of appointments Vowles needs to make are two senior technical positions. Besides the departure of technical director Francois-Xavier Demaison at the same time as Vowles’ predecessor Jost Capito, the team is also looking for a new head of aerodynamics to replace David Wheater.
While Vowles sees much to be done to turn the ship around, the team has at least begun the year in a promising position, close enough to the tight midfield group to be able to compete for points. Newcomer Logan Sargeant almost reached Q2 on his debut in Bahrain, while Alex Albon was convinced he would have reached Q3 had a front wing flap not broken. In the race Albon ensured the team scored a point on Vowles’ first weekend in charge, taking 10th place while Sargeant rose to a promising 12th.
“To have the pace we had under the circumstances, I have to say I’m super proud,” beamed Albon afterwards as he pointed out that only Aston Martin was ahead of Williams in lap time gain around Bahrain compared to 2022.
It was an encouraging start for Williams to life under its new team principal. But it’s clear Vowles is under no illusions about the scale of challenge this team faces if it is ever going to return to the glory days of its last championship win, now more than 25 years ago.
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