15/06/2023
NEWS STORY
James Vowles admits that leaving Mercedes for Williams has been an eye-opening experience as he gets to grips with the team that lost its way.
Those new fans of the sport will no doubt see Williams as one of F1's perennial minnows, the back-marker essentially there to make up the numbers while maybe introducing new talent.
However, Williams remains the most successful British F1 team in terms of constructors' titles, having won one more than McLaren, while its record of seven drivers' titles is none too shoddy.
However, those last titles came in 1997, twenty five years ago, and the Williams of today is but a pale shadow of what it once was.
Quite where it all went wrong, nobody knows, and there is nothing to be gained by trying to apportion blame, and while newcomers might be surprised by the Grove outfit's glorious history at least they will have heard of the team, unlike Lotus, Brabham, Tyrrell...
Until the beginning of January, James Vowles was chief strategist at Mercedes, having begun his F1 career back in 2001 with British American Racing at the same Brackley facility.
It's fair to say that leaving the Silver Arrows to take over as team principal at Williams, was pretty much like, under the present circumstances, leaving one's job as head chef at the Ritz Carlton to man the grill at the local Wimpy.
He was leaving a team that prior to the budget cap had been able to throw money at any issue it encountered for a team that didn't come close to reaching the cap once it was introduced.
Much like the house buyer who having exchanged contracts moves in, only to discover a myriad of issues that had never previously come to light, Vowles is now aware of the true state of the Grove outfit.
"There are some elements that are twenty years out of date, which makes sense if you think through the history of this team," he tells Motorsport.com.
"The investment it had was zero for around about twenty years and then an investment firm came through," he adds, referring to Dorilton Capital's purchase of the team in August 2020.
"Fundamentally, we're in a situation where a lot of facilities were almost preserved from where they were 20 years ago. Composites is behind what I knew when I first joined the sport with a different team 20 years ago..." he admits.
Asked the basic difference between his new team and his previous one, he replies: "I think everything. There are not many, but some elements of the organisation that are of a similar level to Mercedes."
However, according to the Briton, it isn't merely the team's facilities that are woefully out of date.
"If you took a group of people and hid them away, and another group of people hid them away, they evolve to different stages," he says. "And that's what's happened, the view of what excellence is is completely different to what it really is today, and you have to move things forward.
"Internally, a lot of the work I've been asking them to do has been likened to asking us to do three years of development in six months. But that's the standard. In fact, the standard is higher than that.
"This is where I think we have to have a middle step. You have to show people the pathway, lead them down the pathway and make sure you support them and provide them with the equipment that allows them to do the same thing.
"The other thing on people is that very clearly at Mercedes, you could attract near enough anyone you wanted one with phone call," he adds.
Under the old management, in much the same way as Bernie Ecclestone once described Silverstone, Williams had been allowed to fall into disrepair.
When this happens and a 'new broom' is brought in to get things into shape it is not uncommon to find resistance, however Vowles has not found this to be the case.
"If the organisation had rejected me, we would have had a problem," he admits. "But it hasn't, it's done the complete opposite. This organisation knows that we need to change that we need to move on. That we need to evolve to have success, and everyone is ready to do that."
As he seeks to bring the team into the 21st century, Vowles is calling on the sport to allow his team - and others - to increase the capital expenditure allowance - which is currently set at $36m over a four year period - in a bid to improve its facilities without compromising the budget cap.
"Formula 1 and the FIA have been very supportive, because within the first week of being here, I showed them: 'This is what I had at Mercedes, here's what I have at Williams. There's zero chance that we will be able to compete with this'.
"I think where we are now is that by July that will be signed and teams like ourselves will be able to invest to catch back up."