Williams Chief Opens Up On Restructuring Overdrive That Caused Temporary Setbacks

Williams team principal James Vowles has opened up about the team going into overdrive given the urgent requirement to transform its "infrastructure and technology" to make it more competitive.

However, Williams encountered setbacks from the overhaul, which Vowles attributes to changing too many things in a short space of time.

Vowles joined the Grove outfit in 2023 and immediately set to work to change the team's old ways of working to a modern, state-of-the-art approach. But he reckons the change has been too much for the team to take in at once and remarked that not every aspect of change has worked the way it was intended to.

Despite the challenges, the team boss claimed there have been a lot of lessons to take away, which help shape a better future. Speaking to Motorsport.com, he said:

“We have to change a lot within our organisation in terms of infrastructure and technology to get us to the right place.

“And there's a sign called change saturation. You can change things at a certain rate. You go too far and you break it – in hindsight, moving things a little bit further than we can really deal with in one go.

“But we won't undo that learning. That learning will stay with us now for the rest of time. So it's a positive, just damaged by a negative. And what I'm saying by that is, yep, that's absolutely spot-on.

“But we didn't get it all right, which is why we're not fighting for those positions. That's a reflection of where we are as a team and where I want us to be as a team.”

While Vowles has followed this approach with the 2024 FW46 F1 car, he admitted it has been done from a perspective of long-term gains, especially with the 2026 season on the horizon, when the sport enters a new era of regulations. Speaking about the changes on the 2024 car, he said:

“I wanted to stress the system to the absolute limit to understand where it's breaking, and how it's breaking – once. It's the only winter we're going to do it.

“I always said from the beginning, before we started the year, we were going to sacrifice 2024 and 2025. This is a little bit what the sacrifice looks like, just with a lot more attrition than I expected.”

Vowles pointed out that team owner Dorilton Capital was supportive of his vision of short-term sacrifices for long-term gains. He said:

“It was part of the agreement from the get-go when I joined, which is no one, neither side, wants any short-term fixes. Everything is doing right for the future.

“Nothing should be a sticky plaster. Sticky plasters look good, create a veneer, and then it falls over pretty quickly. It could be a year, it could be three years, but it falls over. Do this right that we're building a team that is successful for many years to come. So in answer to that, it's mutual buy-in for us.”

Explaining the team's changed approach to the 2026 season, he said:

“What we already know internally is ‘26 isn't going to be the be-all and end-all. It will just be a positive step in the right direction. ‘27, ‘28 should be steps above that.

“And really, from ‘25 onwards, we're just starting to see the fruits of the labour that we've been getting, in the last few years, delivered.

“As soon as you go and pick one year and say ‘this is going to be it’, you create probably the wrong environment. Every year should be a build from the previous one.”