Williams' James Vowles ‘backing failure' in bid to guide team to F1 summit

The Guardian

a day ago

Finding themselves fighting off Ferrari and mauling the midfield, these are heady times for a resurgent Williams. The team principal James Vowles has engineered an extraordinary comeback but this year's progress is likely to be just the start for a team determined to return to the heights of Formula One, which they once dominated.
That Williams' form has changed drastically could not have been clearer than at the Miami GP. Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz were in a fight with the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, the Scuderia finding themselves at one point trying to catch Albon, who took fifth place and at the same time fending off a charging Sainz.
That scenario was unthinkable in recent years for a team that have been in the bottom two in the championship in five of the past seven seasons. Heading into this weekend's Spanish GP they are now fifth, well behind the big four but with more than double the points of Haas, their nearest competitors in the midfield.
In the grand scheme of the title fight this might be considered small beer but in F1 terms it is an extraordinary feat, especially given Vowles has only been in charge since January 2023, when he inherited a team that were flailing as well as lacking infrastructure and organisation.
Vowles, who has an engineer's bent for breaking down questions to ensure they have been comprehensively examined, plays down his role in the turnaround but it is impossible to ignore that he has been at the helm and had the force of will to see it through. Fighting for titles is now the very real expectation.
He has led an investment in people, as well as facilities and structures and in changing the approach within the team. 'We have a really open, honest culture. There is no bullshit. I believe in failure and I believe in backing failure at this point in time,' he says. 'When you fail, you learn more than anything else you've done prior to that point, because it hurts. As long as you take the learning from that and give it to everyone else, it's the strongest thing you can do.'
There is precedent to this for Vowles, who began his F1 career at British American Racing in 2001. He recalls there were 255 personnel at the time and within months there was a cull of 56 of them, all fired in one fell swoop. 'I was in there watching a team fall apart because of a fear of failure, not growing as a result of it,' he says. 'I've made it my ethos that is not how I ever want a team to be.'
What followed was a remarkable career as chief strategist at Brawn GP, including Jenson Button's title in 2009 and then with Mercedes and their unprecedented success between 2014 and 2021. Experience he brought with him when he took on his first gig as team principal at Williams.
There has been no magic bullet, however, rather a series of measures all interlinked. The team, formed by Frank Williams in 1977 and who went on to take nine constructors' and seven drivers' titles, were sold by the family to the private investment company Dorilton Capital in 2020, which has since backed it financially.
They are now operating very much closer to the capacity required to be competitive. The personnel count has risen from 700 to 1100 and Vowles has made them an attractive prospect to entice the best. They are spending at the limit of the budget cap, have two world-class drivers and, as Vowles notes, an agility in the decision-making process that many rivals will envy. Putting it all together has been crucial.
'The biggest change we've really made is actually just getting the team to work together in harmony, point the right way and talk to each other,' he says. 'The right people in the right place working together with the right culture wrapping around them.'
He has been explicit in targeting 2026 as the year he expected the Williams comeback to begin and it appears he has brought everyone with him.
'I like JV because he has a plan and he will commit 100% to it. He trusts his feeling, his plan, his project, and I back him,' noted Sainz from the sharp end. Inside Williams the sentiment is the same.
The temptation at this stage would be to hurl everything at the car to hang on to fifth place but this is of no interest to Vowles, who has long-since shifted the team's entire focus to the car for 2026. 'The gun is already fired,' he says with finality.
This season then, for all that it is already a standout in Williams' recent history, is far from where Vowles wants and now expects the team to be.
'I'm here to win,' he says. 'Celebrating the fifths and the sixths along the way means we won't get towards winning as quickly as we would otherwise. Which means I'm not satisfied and the ambition does not end with finishing fifth this season.'