James Vowles has opened up on the struggles Williams Racing is facing on its journey to get back to the top of Formula 1, explaining how a lack of investment means the team is working with “20 years out of date” tools, and how he plans to change that with a new management vision and experience he obtained from several years working at the all-conquering Mercedes.
Photo Credit: Williams Racing
Vowles took over the role of Team Principal at the start of the 2023 F1 season from Jost Capito, who had run the Grove squad in 2021 and 2022, joining after several years as a senior strategist from rivals and current engine suppliers Mercedes.
And whilst the Briton might have expected the road to bring the Grove squad back to the top of F1 to be difficult, he admitted to have found it harder than expected. Speaking to RaceFans.net, Vowles pointed out that the team runs a modern Formula 1 team with equipment’s and tools “20 years out of date”, and admitted it is “incredible” that the team can put a relatively competitive car on-track despite lagging behind so much on the technical side:
“There are some elements that are 20 years out of date, which makes sense if you think through the history of this team. The investment it had was zero for around about 20 years and then an investment firm came through.
“Fundamentally, we’re in a situation where a lot of facilities were almost preserved from where they were 20 years ago. Composites is behind what I knew when I first joined the sport with a different team 20 years ago.
“It’s an organisation that is incredible in what it achieved,” he said. “It has a car here, 17,000 components that it put together without any digitised system at all. I didn’t even believe that was possible in modern day Formula 1.”
Vowles said it is important for him to stress-test the team in key areas to find the limitations – not only of the systems and tools, but also the personnel – and get to the bottom of the major issues holding the squad back from being a force to be reckoned with, with the focus being on bringing the team’s views and thought-process up to modern standards:
“The one that drives everything is ultimately performance, and that’s why the focus has to go into that one. But every time you push something, you’ll find another limitation, another logjam, and that’s what you have to go and clear up. And at the moment you don’t find that till you stress the organisation, which is what we’re doing in various ways.”
“If you took a group of people and hid them away, and another group of people hid them away, they evolve to different stages,” he explained. “And that’s what’s happened, the view of what excellence is is completely different to what it really is today, and you have to move things forward.”
Having had first-hand experience of what a modern day F1 top team is like, the 43-year-old has a very well defined plan of what he envisages for Williams in the future, and says the work has already started with the personnel, and its intensity is such that it resembles to doing “three years of development in six months”, and that still won’t be enough to get the squad to the required benchmark of the sport’s biggest names, citing difficulties even with simple things such as internal communication:
“Internally, a lot of the work I’ve been asking them to do has been likened to asking us to do three years of development in six months. Yes, but that’s the standard. In fact, the standard is higher than that.
“This is where I think we have to have a middle step. You have to show people the pathway, lead them down the pathway and make sure you support them and provide them with the equipment that allows them to do the same thing.
“The other thing on people is that very clearly at Mercedes, you could attract near enough anyone you wanted one with phone call.”
The Briton suggested the team will keep evolving its staff and facilities in the meantime, and suggested new recruitments will be happening in the near future, but emphasized the need to provide them with the right tools and up-to-date equipment to be able to fully realise the vision he has for the team:
“Over the last two or three weeks we’ve started to put in place a good set of management team elements. There’s more to come. There’s more signings that will be public over the next few months and you’ll start to see from that what the structure I have in my mind will look like.
“That’s what’s missing at the moment. It doesn’t quite have the structure required to run it and operate it on a day-to-day basis and also develop it and move it forward. And that will appear.”
Dave Robson, the team’s Head of Vehicle Performance, said in a media session in Spain that having Vowles’ experience has been “enlightening” for the team and is “completely confident” that the former Mercedes engineer will be able to realise his plans in the timescale that is targeted:
“I’m completely confident in what he is doing,” said Robson. “The timescales involved in actually seeing the real progress, it may take us beyond ’24, perhaps.
“There’s quite a lot of rebuilding and restructuring, and getting his experience of what state-of-the-art genuinely looks like has been quite enlightening.
“But it does mean there’s a lot to do and probably more to do than we thought there was. So, there’s a lot to do but he’s set in motion all of the right things but there’s a gestation period to all of that.”
