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With the arrival of new Williams
Racing Team Principal James Vowles there has been a lot of discussion
regarding whether he is the right person for the job and secondly, even if
you accept that he is, whether or not he can deal with the challenges that
he is being faced with in his new role and in turn hopefully restore the
team to one with more success than it has been in previous years.
Coming from a background of having spent a considerable amount of time at
the highly successful Mercedes team James fully understands what is required
to see a team produce World Championships. But one must take into account
that Mercedes has had a lengthy period where they were able to put together
a list of impressive facilities, well ahead of what Williams has been able
to achieve on their vastly smaller budget.
On his arrival at Williams James was to find that such were the limitations
of what Williams was able to put together over the years given their
restricted budget that there was quite a few systems that were the accepted
thing at Mercedes but were lacking at Williams. Once such system is one that
keeps track of all the parts that make up a F1 car enabling the team to
carry out such things as the aging of each part.
As he investigated the unfortunate state of affairs at Williams James would
comment: “was probably what took me back the most.”
Despite some limited success over the years the short comings of this lack
of investment is now coming to the fore and it would have to rank as one of
James' biggest challenges. Certainly the situation has improved since the
takeover by Dorilton and their investment at the team but now with the
budget cap playing a significant role in terms of teams spending James can't
simply spend his way out of the problem.
It is really becoming a project that could take several years to work
through that sees the team prioritise the areas where extra spending is
required combined with managing that alongside the normal day to day budget
of building and racing the teams cars.
James spoke of the challenge ahead: “The team has over the last 15 years
been through a tremendous amount of difficulty, financially and otherwise
and it’s survived all of that – but it’s just survival, compared to other
organisations that have had finance.”
“That’s the luxury I had prior to joining the team and as a result of that,
you have these stark differences between where we are today and where we
need to be in the future.
He added: “The cost cap is just a limiting factor on all of these things,
simply just because it puts us in a position where there’s a limited amount
of capex, that won’t be enough to spend our way to success. So the pathway
is to a certain extent the number of years required to get some of the core
facilities to the level required to compete with the funds and that’s not
the work of six months or 12 months.”
Since he arrived in his new role James has been quite open about his
understanding of how the process of returning Williams back to been a
successful team is not going to be one that is achieved in a single season.
James added: “A realistic step for this organisation is to make sure every
year, we are just pushing forward and not slipping back, so that has to be
dream number one; and dream number two is we have to decide on a sensible
time in the future – and it’s years – where we start to actually break into
sixth, fifth, fourth.”
“From then onwards, the sport will really have to have some level of
political change to allow probably the teams to break into the top three.
That’s the future, but we’ll see how it ends up.”
One of the major decisions that James will have to address is their 2026
engine supplier. From this year F1 engines will see a major shift to been
more sustainable in terms of running things like 100% sustainable fuels.
Williams have been supplied with Mercedes engines since 2014 and James has
indicated that this relationship has been a positive one. James said:
“clearly, we’re happy with the relationship that’s been in place for many
years, Mercedes have produced fundamentally the best on average power unit
in the last 15 years”.
But for James and the Williams team there are quite a few options beyond
just Mercedes that will need to be investigated. But this is one of James's
challenges as any decision will most likely have to be made before the end
of 2023.
But beyond the engineering challenges James is also faced with the
challenges of securing the personnel who can assist in taking the team
forward. The most notable one been the filling of the position of Technical
Director, a position that has been vacant since late 2022.
James commented: “I’m a firm believer in fundamentally ensuring we have
growth within our sport, we have some incredible individuals that are ready
to be technical directors. So first and foremost, it’s someone with Formula
1 experience, it’s not going to be someone from outside of our sport.
“And it could be someone who has already been in the role who wants a change
of scenery or someone that has been really up against a glass ceiling and
ready and waiting, and has all the ability to do so but hasn’t had the
opportunity.”
Beyond the Technical Director Williams has been pushing ahead employing
several new people in key positions such as a new Chief Operating Officer
Frederic Brousseau and Chief Revenue Officer Paul Asencio. In respect of the
COO James made it clear of the importance of having someone who is able to
provide assist James.
James added: “He’s (Brousseau) perfect for the role and I think it’s a
position that Williams hasn’t had the luxury of having for many years. I
have, in my previous life, had a very, very good COO, and it makes a
tremendous amount of difference.”
But the most significant of challenges for James has to be the management of
taking the Williams team forward in the short term but not at the cost of
any long term goals.
James spoke of view of how the team should be working: "There’s a balance
certainly but basically the intent within the organisation is incredibly
clear, if you have a choice between a decision that improves us next week or
one that can improve us significantly more in six months, 12 months, 24
months you go with the latter of those two decisions."
"You still have a wind tunnel however that has to go through the process it
normally would do to evaluate performance and that will I’m sure result in
performance that we can add to the car this year.
“Furthermore, there are some elements that aren’t quite optimised and don’t
necessarily have a large cost on next year’s performance package but allows
the learning to move forward and that’s where we’ll invest our money and our
time.
“However, what I mean by that is we are certainly not going to shortcut it
to fill technical roles for people here for six months rather than 12 or 24
months, we’ll find the right people and get the right people in place.
“Again, in terms of core structures for the car as well, we aren’t going to
rush next year’s chassis, we’ll do this in the way that I am used to, take
our time about it but make sure we take chunks of performance as we do so.”
So as we move into the next series of races there will be the normal
pressure of achieving a successful result but behind the day to day running
of the team for James it is a season of hopefully making progress in those
areas that are viewed as been integral to any future success by the team. It
is a difficult time for James as not only does he need to see a successful
team in the short term but also in the long term.
Thankfully it is my view that with the backing of Dorilton and the board
that James is in a far better position to move the team forward. But still
is is going to be a challenging time for the new Team Principal. |
