James Vowles: ‘This is why Williams and Carlos Sainz will be F1 title contenders again’
The popular F1 team principal and unlikely star of ‘Drive to Survive’ tells Kieran Jackson why Williams are well-placed for the future – and what he learned from 10 years of working with Lewis Hamilton
T
wo years into the project of a lifetime, James Vowles is keeping his ultra-focused head above the parapet.
Hunched over a table in his team’s hospitality unit, the Williams team principal is reflecting on a 2024 season of underachievement. In 24 races, his team recorded more crashes than points: 20 to 17. To say it was an expensive, energy-sapping campaign would be an understatement.
Yet ultimately, it does not matter. Nor does the upcoming 2025 season, even with Ferrari race winner Carlos Sainz, a coup of an acquisition, joining the team to partner Alex Albon. Nearly all of Vowles’ attention is geared towards 2026; a year of new engine and chassis regulations and, as such, fresh opportunity at the front.
“I will not sacrifice the future for the now,” Vowles tells The Independent. And even now, he is laser-sharp in his philosophy, 10 days out from the first race of the season in Australia.
“Above all else, the most important year is 2026. It doesn’t matter where we finish in the championship in 2025. It’s not that I don’t care, I do care. But the on-track performance is not an indicator of the lovely things going on at Williams.
“And that’s not a pair of handcuffs we put on ourselves. We need to see excellence coming into our organisation: the best graduates, infrastructure, and continuous movement forward in all areas.
“That’s the metric I stand by which is tangible, and I can control that moving forward.”
The 45-year-old’s seeking of success stems from a career in which he has thrived at the very top of Formula One. Starting out with BAR (British American Racing) in 2001, the engineering graduate first rose to prominence as Brawn’s race strategist in 2009, guiding Jenson Button to the most fairytale of F1 title triumphs.
Vowles stayed with the same outfit as chief strategist as they morphed into the Mercedes juggernaut of the 2010s hybrid era; a team which won eight straight constructors’ championships and seven drivers’ titles.
Six of those were won by Lewis Hamilton; a driver Vowles still takes inspiration from to this day. “Lewis reinvented himself every winter,” he explains. “Whether it be diet, training, lifestyle, his approach to data and video, he was prepared to rip it up and start again.
“What I learned from Lewis is this culture of ‘if you keep winning, keep changing – in fact, change more.’
“If you stay still, you fall back and he taught me that, in spades.”
2001-2009: BAR/Honda/Brawn – Chief Strategist
2010-2022: Mercedes – Chief Strategist/Motorsport Strategy Director
2023-current: Williams – Team Principal
Vowles pontificates about his vision for Williams in an astute and precise manner. In almost every answer, he states the significance of “culture” within a team. Every second in his company feels like a lesson in the pursuit of organisational excellence, with terminology seeming to emanate straight out of Jake Humphrey’s High Performance Podcast. Yes, Vowles was a guest last year.
Yet it is easy to see why Sainz – in the peak of his career – turned down offers from Alpine and Audi to join Vowles’ ambitious approach for the future. The team boss has thrived in an environment of sporting supremacy – and he wants to awaken a sleeping giant in the second coming of the behemoth built by Sir Frank Williams nearly 50 years ago.
“Don’t settle for what you’ve done today – keep breaking it and evolving it,” Vowles says, when asked what he can take from his dozen years at Mercedes and instil at Williams.
“We can have failure in the pursuit of more performance, whereas failure because you haven’t followed due process is a problem. But if we look at a problem and try something, that’s celebrated because that’s how you have innovation.
“I don’t need to manage Carlos’s expectations. He’s coming here because he wants to make Williams successful and be a key driver towards it. That’s what I love about him – he’s part of the future.”
Last summer, Vowles hired 26 technical staff from rival teams, including Alpine’s former technical director Matt Harman. A year earlier, he signed highly respected engineer Pat Fry as chief technical officer. He has had to make tough calls already, ditching Logan Sargeant in the middle of last season for Franco Colapinto, who impressed and has now moved onto Alpine with no room at the inn.
But Williams now have one of the strongest driver line-ups on the grid and sound financial backing, having signed a lucrative agreement with Australian software company Atlassian in the off-season. All the wheels are in motion.
However, they are not the only midfield team targeting 2026; Aston Martin, with the arrival of Adrian Newey, want to be a championship contender too, alongside the current frontrunners. Yet Vowles insists Williams’s forward-planning is “extreme” – their power unit is in place with Mercedes and his insistence on sacrificing three years of competition is persuasive. He will do it his way.
“I’m hyper-competitive, that comes across clearly,” he says. “And I’m surrounded by 1,000 hyper-competitive people, so it feels like a family to me.”
With partner Rachel, an NHS surgeon, and a young daughter at home in Oxford, Vowles’ home life briefly appears on the new series of Drive to Survive. His forensic and amusing attitude when it comes to caffeine intake was a hit on the last series, so much so that he was the focus of a joke from host Jack Whitehall at F1 75 Live in London last month. But the fanfare is not why he does it.
“I have the opportunity to bring back the sport’s second-most successful team with the right investment,” he signs off. “How many people have that opportunity up and down the pit lane?
“That’s why I do it. We’re not out of the woods yet, there’s still a tremendous amount to do in the next two years. But the good news is I can now see light at the end of the tunnel.”
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
The popular F1 team principal and unlikely star of ‘Drive to Survive’ tells Kieran Jackson why Williams are well-placed for the future – and what he learned from 10 years of working with Lewis Hamilton
JAMES VOWLES – F1 CAREER
Join our commenting forum
Sign up to our free sport newsletter for all the latest news on everything from cycling to boxing
More about
Most Popular
Popular videos
Sponsored Features
Williams in the News: Positivity abounds as 2025 draws into view
By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.
Find out what the press have been saying about Atlassian Williams Racing this week
Transformation time
Testing talk
Alex’s assessment
Swipe through our 2025 style:
Brick by brick:
Related Tags:
Williams Stars ‘Embracing The Ethos’ As James Vowles Reveals His Own ‘Papaya Rules’
Williams are heading into the 2025 season with a new car, a new driver line-up, and fresh optimism that they can continue their development as they look to work their way up the grid.
With the teams entering the final year of the current regulations, the new campaign promises to deliver some of the closest racing of the last few years, and Williams are hopeful that they can battle further up the field this season.
More news: EXCLUSIVE: James Vowles On Albon And Sainz, F1 75 Appearance, AI In F1, And Atlassian Partnership
The change in driver line-up also brings a change in dynamic in the garage, with former Ferrari ace Carlos Sainz joining the team to join the team’s number-one driver from last season, Alex Albon.
It’s a pairing that offers the Oxfordshire-based team two experienced, proven talents, but with two strong driving talents behind the wheel, the pair may well find themselves fighting over the same piece of tarmac on more than one occasion as the season progresses.
For team principal James Vowles, it’s a welcome problem to prepare for, as he revealed in an exclusive interview with Newsweek that the team has its own version of the “Papaya Rules” that laid out the terms of on-track engagement for McLaren’s pairing of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri last season.
When asked if the team would be operating something similar, Vowles replied, “Yeah, definitely.
“I was obviously with Mercedes in an era where we were fighting tooth and nail for many championships, and you need structure around what you do, because drivers are just human beings, and human beings need a structure by which they know they can push the boundaries of.”
Vowles also explained that Williams’ team focus may be different to the likes of McLaren and Mercedes, whose drivers will be looking to challenge for race wins and, potentially, the F1 Drivers’ Championship.
Rather than focusing on individual performance, Vowles said that Williams will be adopting team-first approach in 2025, and that will dictate their tactical decision-making during race weekends.
“It’ll be different to where McLaren is,” he explained.
“And ours is different to where Mercedes is, for transparency as well, because (our rules) are about building this entity into a winning organization, and that means putting the team first. That’s got similar hints to McLaren, as you will tell.”
Williams have endured some tough years towards the bottom of F1’s pecking order. But under Vowles, the team is making strides to become a more competitive entity. His first season in charge of the team saw the Grove team finish seventh in the 2023 Constructors’ Championship, and they looked good for a similar season last year before big crashes put the team under duress in the final rounds of the championship.
Their ninth-place finish in 2024 stemmed more from their late-season issues than from a reflection of their overall performance throughout the season.
In both seasons, the team had a clear number-one driver in Albon, with an inexperienced partner – Logan Sargeant and Franco Colapinto – alongside him. But now, with two well-experienced and talented drivers in the team, the potential is there for a more successful season in the Constructors’ Championship.
With the driving talent in place, Vowles insisted that the team builds appropriately around them – and that includes drawing up their own “house rules” for Albon and Sainz when they find themselves battling head-to-head on track.
“You definitely need structure,” he said.
“I think it’s a really important thing to have structure, because then what you create around it is individuals (who) know where they stand relative to it. You’re not making things up.
“The biggest situations that have been controversial is when you’re trying to change things in the middle of a race – that becomes difficult to manage.
“Whereas, if you’re in the room with me right now and we were talking this through, calm, and going through it logically, you can actually get to a very sensible place.”
And Vowles revealed that he’s had those conversations with Albon and Sainz already to ensure everyone is on the same page ahead of the 2025 season opener in Melbourne next weekend.
More news: EXCLUSIVE: Mike Cannon-Brookes on Atlassian Williams Racing’s Game-Changing F1 Partnership
“What I’m pleased to say is, we went through this discussion with Alex and Carlos in Grove not long ago and they actually on top of it added their own constraints about how the team is going to come further,” he said.
“So, if one of them’s disadvantaged, ‘How do we do this?’ ‘Let’s do this, I’ll give you this time,’ etc.
“That’s fantastic to see, because it’s individuals that are embracing the ethos that we’re already putting forward.”
More Formula 1:
Drive to Survive Captures Emotional Moment Rookie is Named Lewis Hamilton’s Successor
FIA Introduces Last Minute Rule Change Before 2025 Formula 1 Season
For more motorsport, head to Newsweek Sports.
Newsweek is committed to journalism that is factual and fair
We value your input and encourage you to rate this article.
Based in Rochester, England, Simon Head is a veteran sports editor who has covered sports for national and international outlets … read more
Newsletters in your inbox See all
Company
Editions:
Contact
Terms of Use
© 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC
