Williams building from the ground up with long-term F1 plan for success

Team principal James Vowles is unequivocal when discussing the long-term ambitions to take Williams back to the front of Formula 1 – and has no issues in admitting it is not a quick fix.

Having finished seventh in the constructors’ championship last season, Williams currently occupy eighth in the 2024 standings although the recent double points finish for Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto in Azerbaijan has improved the outlook.

Recent results are a far cry from the halcyon days of the 1980s and 90s during which time Williams won nine constructors’ titles and seven drivers’ championships.

Vowles, who has championship-winning experience working at Brawn and Mercedes before getting the top job at Williams, is committed to returning the team to the glory years and revealed at an Autosport Business event at Soho House in Austin that the whole team is aligned when it comes to the long-term nature of the plan required.

“We have to accept that ’24 and ’25 are just simply stepping stones in our pathway, but they’re not the key years,” he told Autosport editor-in-chief Rebecca Clancy during a panel.

“They’re years where we’ll deliver slight performance updates. We’ll move forward. I think we’ve demonstrated that enough. But let’s invest everything into our future and that’s 2026 where near enough every single rule has changed, not a line in it carrying over from ’24 or ’25, not a piece of the car will carry over.

“It is completely start again, clean sheet of paper and for a team like us, it means that I’ve already got a huge number of the organisation working on 2026. It’s a year and a half away. But it doesn’t matter. They’ve been designing the ’26 car for about six months now. The best aerodynamicists working on ’26, they’re not working on ’24 or ’25.”

Jamie Chadwick, Williams Racing Driver & F1 Academy Adviser with James Vowles, Team Principal, Williams Racing

Photo by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

Asked if Dorilton Capital, the investment firm that purchased Williams in 2020, and the team’s wealth of partners were on board with the potential loss of earnings through performance in 2024 and 2025 with attention turned to the new era beginning in 2026, Vowles replied: “Without a doubt.

“In the first conversations I had when I was joining Williams, I laid out a pathway and a cost and what was relayed back to me was: ‘Don’t shortcut anything. Let’s get this right, because we get it right once’.

“It takes the time it takes to get this fixed. But if you shortcut anything, maybe we’ll move forward slightly, but you will move back at some point. You’ve got to do this properly foundationally. So there were two things we’re doing.

“With our partners, every single one of them is aware of what this journey is. It’s not one where you’ll see us leap forward next year. But if you want to be in the second-most successful team on the grid that absolutely has the investment to get back to the front, now’s the time to get in at ground zero, and that’s resonated.”

With the changing rules and the ever-increasing technical innovations open to Formula 1 teams, Vowles is also keen to make sure the human element, and the mantra that failure is an option, is not lost from Williams at what is fast becoming a crucial period in the team’s history.

“You need a culture of continuous change. What you’ve done yesterday, that’s not good enough anymore,” he added.

“It’s not about what technology infrastructure you have. It is created by the people and the culture that you’re driving. We do it. We develop it. Keep moving on, making sure that you’re driving innovation and innovation is a word for me that is synonymous with not a small development, but rather a technology change that you’re putting in place that changes either the sport or the world – big, big words, but that’s what innovation is for me.

James Vowles, Team Principal, Williams Racing

Photo by: Williams

“To get there, you need a culture where failure is completely acceptable. I fail most days, but we’re failing most days because we’re pushing everything to the boundary of where it should be.

“So as long as you have a culture where blame doesn’t exist, but more importantly, you can learn from whatever failure you’ve had and improve from it, you can suddenly start to get this momentum that forms behind it.”

Vowles is also clearly under no illusions of the size of the task at hand, but the straight-talking 45-year-old believes he knows just what is required.

“Williams is the second most successful team on the grid. Even today, only Ferrari is more successful,” he said.

“So when the call came in late ’22 to join such a powerful organisation, an organisation that perhaps for 15 years hasn’t been invested in the right level but had so much potential. It was an easy decision – and that’s coming from the most successful team on the grid [Mercedes].

“When you have an organisation that hasn’t been financed in the right way for a number of years, you normally end up with quite a few infrastructure problems to fix, people problems, culture problems that come from it as well.

“The real solution behind it is, and I said these words on the first day that I joined the organisation, but we’re going to break everything and that’s really what we are doing.

Alex Albon, Williams FW46

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“It is not about putting a sticky plaster or a band aid on top of it. We are going to go back to absolute foundations, making sure that we get the people absolutely right.

“That means hiring the brightest and best and training the brightest and best. So to give you an idea, we welcomed 110 early careers into the organisation, the organisation is a thousand people, if that doesn’t tell you what we’re doing for the future…that’s a 10-year program before it really delivers strength, but that’s where we’re putting our investment.”