James Vowles has responded to fan questions during the latest Vowles Verdict. Unsurprisingly, following the events in Melbourne, which saw only one car take to the track on race day, fans of Williams Racing are anxious as to whether the same thing could happen in Suzuka. There was also the question as to how the team’s morale is following such a trying time. In amongst Vowles’ remarks he explained how it is important to “use this as a positive and not as a negative”.
On the latest edition of the Vowles Verdict (a webcast run by Williams Racing in the days after a Grand Prix weekend) Team Principal James Vowles has once again been answering fan questions. One of the questions which caught the eye was: “Think it’s safe to say Aus was a bit of a disaster for the team. How do you boost morale after such a difficult weekend?” Vowles’ reply was typical in its honest and open style as the man now leading Williams is known for.
“I think it’s a fair comment it’s a disaster.” admitted Vowles. “We’re in an elite sport at the leading edge of what I think is the pinnacle of motorsport and yet we fielded one car and that’s not a situation we plan to be in or want to be in and nor do any team for that matter.”
Vowles went on to explain how it is important to use this as a positive and not as a negative. However, he did make clear that having the lack of a 3rd chassis was obviously not a surprise to those in the Williams ranks – but now the problem was known on a global scale.
“I already knew the case was there, the difference now is the whole world has seen where we are really in reality and how far behind we are and what work we have to do to move forward.” stated Vowles. “It’s a catalyst to change. We are adapting and transforming the background and part of the reason why we’re delayed is we are adding processes and transformation to the organisation whilst asking ourselves to do three cars not one car and a far more complex technology package than we’ve ever done before.”
The events in Melbourne proved that Williams Racing as an organization, by Vowles’ admission, is stressed to the absolute limit and part of the outcome of that is not being able to have a third chassis on standby. Vowles told fans “it’s on its way but it’s not available yet.”
Williams Racing have made big steps to climb from the bottom of the table but Vowles reaffirmed that it cannot be at the expense of key parts. Once again, Williams’ team principal was key to highlight how to extract positives from recent events.
“The positives of all these though is it shows why we have to continue changing and adapting and moving forward in the way we do. This performance gain that we’ve had across the last year is great but it can’t come at the cost of other items that are just bread and butter and these circumstances that you see will make teams stronger as long as you create the right environment and that’s my job to do so.” explained Vowles.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of the fan concern was centered around the chance that the exact same situation could be repeated in Suzuka. With that in mind the question posed to Williams Racing’s Team Principal was: “What’s the plan for Suzuka if the factory can’t fix Albon’s chassis?” On this, Vowles was confident that it wouldn’t be a factor due to the work which already happened on the ground in Melbourne.
“I’m confident we’ll be able to fix the chassis.” claimed Vowles to an expectant fanbase. “We put measures in place to make sure the chassis was back here very early on Monday morning I think it arrived around 2:00 AM or so and since then there was already crews inside the building working on that stripping it down and doing repairs and just on an update today is we’re in a good place for having the chassis back early enough for Suzuka.
“So, to answer your question a lot of the work’s done actually back in Melbourne there was photographs and techniques called NDT which is non-destructive testing so there’s various ones you can do there but it allows us to fully understand how big the damage is and what we have to do and that preparation was key. What it meant was already at 2:00 AM on Monday, work could start, it wasn’t then a reflection on what was happening it was more ‘this is what we’re doing and this is how we execute it’ so in Suzuka we’ll have two cars without too many issues.”
Of course, as much as Williams Racing look set to have two cars in Japan, Vowles reminded fans “We won’t have a spare chassis in Japan.” Seeing how it is ‘weeks and weeks of work and thousands of hours of work’ the man steering the ship at Williams said that “We have to deal with the circumstances we have in front of us.”
Suzuka is a notoriously difficult track. One can imagine this will bring a lot of pressure on to the shoulders of Logan Sargeant and Alex Albon to keep the car in one piece if they both hope to take part on race day. The challenge for the pair of Williams drivers just became that little bit harder.
