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Williams F1 team has had a rocky few years before James Vowles joined the squad for the 2023 season. Owned by the Williams family at first, poor results and lack of funds to keep the dream alive meant that they had to sell the team. Private investment firm Dorilton Capital swooped in and reportedly bought the team for a whopping $200 million. Ever since then, several changes have been introduced.
James Vowles previously worked at Mercedes as their head of strategy. He made a name for himself working with Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff over the years. Having switched his job, the Brit took control of Williams back in February as he replaced Ex-Volkswagen motorsport boss Jost Capito. James has been very active trying to gather voting support for future F1 Commission meetings. This being in order to allow his team to get a chance to spend more and catch up with the rest of the grid.
However, many limitations will arise even if the Grove based squad gets an approval. Asked by Autosport to outline the realistic timeframe for an F1 team to recover up the competitive order, Vowles said: “Right now, for a lot of facilities that are missing, even if I had a spade and I broke ground tomorrow, it’ll be 36 months before most of the big infrastructure is in place.” he said. “We started to migrate towards it… But I think five years is not a bad period of time to be talking about,” he stated.
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James Vowles is expected to bring some of his tricks that he learned at Mercedes to Williams
It has been rumoured that there have been some cultural problems at Williams for the past few years. James Vowles comes from Mercedes where there is a strict ‘no-blame philosophy’. The team boss will be intending to apply the same philosophy at Williams. However, it is understood that the process will take some time realistically. James has assumed that it will take about 3 years to change the culture at a organisation of 800 people i.e. Williams.
As of the 2023 Belgian GP, Williams are currently holding seventh place in the drivers standings which is a huge improvement. Drivers Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant have done a mega job so far. However, Alex is the one who has managed to score 100% of the team’s points. It will be interesting to see what the team can do together in the remaining half of the F1 season.
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