James Vowles, Andrea Stella, Frederic Vasseur and Peter Bayer.

James, perhaps we could start with you. A frustrating couple of races for the team in Asia. Although you scored no points, what positives do you take from Singapore and Suzuka?
James Vowles: First of all, thank you for reminding me we didn't score anything! The positives are this: at a track that should have been our weakest of the year in Singapore, we were in contention to score a good amount of points. Perhaps, even equalising near-enough the best result of the year so far. And that's a positive to take out of it: even when we're down, we have strength that comes back. Now, the situation came towards us, but actually that situation was created weeks before by saving the right tyres and executing the plan. In Japan, the positives to take out of it is we exposed some weaknesses that we have actually, within some of our procedures. And it happened at an event that didn't cost us anything on points. But with the right attitude, which is what the team's gone through, we actually found ten other areas that we can improve upon. So, there's a wealth of positives and really, the final one is what you said: we didn't lose tremendously in the Championship but we want to be fighting for our own Championship, rather than relying on luck.

Can we talk about your drivers now. Logan in particular, he's getting quicker, relative to Alex, but he is still making mistakes. He's even talked about dialling it down, coming into the Qatar Grand Prix. What is the message from the boss?
JV: You've nailed it. He and I talk at least once a week, if not multiple times a week. The pace is there. That's the thing that we wouldn't be able to fix or repair - but what happens is, when it comes down to the crunch time, there are elements of inconsistency that creep in, and in form of that, goes into an accident sometimes. In Suzuka the lap he did was, line-on-line on the data with Alex, but obviously it's marred by the fact that the last corner, he had far too aggressive a throttle application and there was a crash, and a significant crash as a result of it. What we're working with him on is actually the progression up until that point, he dialled it from two seconds away from Alex to within a tenth in FP3 - in fact he was faster in FP3. And it's actually keeping that mindset all the way through that we're trying to do. We have - and I've said this publicly - a responsibility to invest in our rookie drivers. We've put him there, and we've given him nearly no testing mileage. I'm used to 30,000km, not 850km. But what we want to see is continued progress and now a focus on making sure we keep that consistency in there, which will then deliver results.

No points on the board for him so far. Are you sensing a little bit of frustration coming in?
JV: I think from him the frustration has been there for many months actually. He went into Bahrain - probably the worst thing that can happen - he went into Bahrain overlapped with Lando in terms of Q1, and he thought perhaps the challenge in front of him may not be as significant as it really is. What you then saw after that time... and Alex has grown, I think, across this season, and the gap started to grow, as you found a driver that's now frustrated, his normal tools aren't producing the quality of lap-time that was there previously. He knows how to win. He's won in Formula 3, won in Formula 2 but applying that now in Formula 1 and then not achieving results creates more and more frustration - and then that ends up with over-driving, fundamentally. That's the dialling back bit.

While we're talking about frustration. Alex Albon has spoken recently about the amount of contact being made on the race track. He's even said that drivers learn nothing from five-seconds penalties. Do you agree with him? What is the solution?
JV: I think we all harbour frustration from what happened in Singapore, because the Championship here, against our rivals, will be fought down to a point at the end of the season, and so to lose a couple of points in that circumstance is frustrating. However, the penalties have been very fairly applied. For what it is, the penalty is fairly sensible. You have a much quicker car, clearly five seconds doesn't impact them, but I'm actually more for keeping consistent penalties rather than anything else. In terms of learning, I think there are some drivers that perhaps race differently to others... but my view on this is that they also normally get penalised physically in as much as the car being damaged. In this case, they didn't as much. I think it's fairly balanced at the moment.

OK, final one from me. Can we look at the bigger picture. Andretti. An 11th team in Formula 1. Can we get your thoughts on that please?
JV: My thoughts are very clear. Williams is against the addition of an 11th team. And very strongly against. But I'll explain the reasons behind that and why. My responsibility is to 900 employees within my company. If you go look at Companies House, you can go look it up for Williams, we've submitted it now, you can see that we're lossy. We're very lossy. In fact, compare it from '21 to '22, you'll see that losses are in the tens of millions more. Compare it to '23, which you won't see but I'll guarantee you, it's multiples above that. The reason why is we're investing in this sport, to become better. We believe in where the sport is going, we believe in the direction of travel of the sport. In order to do that... the reason why is we actually have, I think, a sustainable entity for once. Teams are working more and more together, we have close racing as a result of things - but it should be known that this isn't just us that are not financially stable. I'd say probably half the grid aren't. I think the addition of an 11th team is a sensible thing - but only at a point where the 10th team on the grid is financially stable. I'm fortunate to have owners that really believe in what we're doing and to invest in what we're doing - but we need to take care as a sport to make sure we look after that. Everyone says we're in a good place - we are in some regards, but now those facts down the line, that this is tens of millions, or, in fact, hundreds of millions you'll see shortly, being invested to make the sport better, it becomes very clear why we're very careful about diluting what we've already got - because it's just more losses on the table. Now, we've been clear from the beginning, more than happy to bring in new entities, but the pie has to grow as a result of it, not shrink, and so far it's just shrinking. For clarity on that, that's not against either Andretti or GM, quite the opposite. I welcome GM open-armed, and Williams welcomes GM open-arms and I hope to forge a relationship with them, should things not work out. They are an incredible entity that I think will make the sport better. So, it's not that we're close-minded to more people coming into the sport, but what we're very careful on is protecting the sport we have right now.

Andrea, can we come to you and perhaps start with that topic of an 11th team and Andretti. What is your viewpoint on that and what is McLaren's viewpoint on that?
Andreas Stella: Well, our viewpoint is coherent with what we've been saying so far on this matter. If the entry of an 11th team is additive to the sport, then we see this positively. And checking whether this is additive is the duty of the FIA and F1. And at the moment, we just trust the work that these institutions are doing.

Okay, thank you. Let's talk about McLaren now. A very fruitful trip for the team to two very different racetracks in Singapore and Suzuka. Would you say McLaren now has the second fastest car in Formula 1 at every racetrack?
AS: I would not say so. Because in Suzuka, given the track characteristics, I think we were fairly quickly 2nd team, but we were not in Singapore. So, we know we have work to do in tracks that have low speed corners, bumps, very demanding on traction. So definitely we have some more work to do to become the second best team at all tracks.

How ambitious are you for the team for the remainder of this Championship? You're 49 points behind Aston Martin, 113 points behind Ferrari. How far can you climb?
AS: You know, like I've said already, I don't look how far we can go. I just look, what do we have to do now to go as far as possible? So myself, and all the team, we are all focused on keeping improving the car, getting the most out of every weekend, be reliable, operate trackside, as well as we can do and then we see in Abu Dhabi, the final classification.

Talking about improving, let's talk about Oscar Piastri. Can we just get your reflections on Suzuka and the job that he did there? It was a new race track for him, he puts it on the front row. He gets his first podium in Formula 1. Just how did he handle that weekend? What impressed you the most?
AS: I've seen the qualities that he deployed to handle this weekend in Suzuka, they are very similar all across the season. Like he approaches in a very controlled way. He is fast, but he tries to make sure that he doesn't go too far in exploiting the car, just learn run by run. And we see that this progression is always quite consistent, up to the point where it was a P2 in Qualifying, which is quite remarkable considering that Suzuka is unforgiving track, you know, is an old school track, is narrow. There's a couple of places where you turn at more than 250km/h and you sort-of hope that the car will do what you want. And he was quick in these places actually. So it's very remarkable what he's been able to achieve so far and confirmed in Suzuka. Definitely in terms of outright speed. We saw that in the race, that in terms of achieving the consistency required to stay there, there's some more work to do. He just said that himself, straight out of the car, he actually focus more on this element than on the fact that he was on the podium. But we appreciate that. It just shows the commitment and the fact that he is ambitious. But we are also delighted that we could contribute to Oscar scoring his first podium. This is, you know, historical in his career, and we enjoy the moment together with Oscar.

And for Lando, it's been four second places this year now. How close is that win now, do you feel?
AS: Well, the fact that you've been four times second actually doesn't change very much! Every event is a new event. So, you have to do the whole job, you don't accrue any credit with that. I've seen these results that you said, they just show that we have improved and we are now close. But if you see the performance step required, for instance, in Japan, to actually be P1, it's huge. It was more than half-a-second in Qualifying. And we don't even know in the race how much it was because Verstappen didn't need to push. So, we are very conscious that there's a lot of work to do ahead. But being P2 occasionally is a good position to be. We need to make the final step.

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