The cycle of F1 upheaval Williams must end to rediscover past glories

When Alex Albon claimed a point for Williams in the opening race of the season in Bahrain it raised many a smile, whether among its hard-pressed staff, patient fans, or those of us who have followed the great British team’s trials and tribulations. For new team boss James Vowles, less than two weeks into the job, it showed the potential which lies within the FW45, which in testing lapped 2.4s quicker than its predecessor almost straight out of the box.

Meanwhile former team boss Jost Capito posted a congratulatory note on LinkedIn, somewhat pointedly thanking former technical director FX Demaison and the departing aerodynamics director David Wheater for all their hard work on the new car during 2022.

It is 20 years since Williams last mounted a championship challenge worthy of the name, 26 years since the team last won a world championship title. The decline has been painful to watch.

With 16 world championship titles under its belt, the team founded and led by Frank Williams and Patrick Head has struggled to recapture past glories. One symptom of the fall was the team opting to change engine suppliers no fewer than six times in 10 years. After the relationship with BMW soured in 2005, Williams moved to Cosworth, Toyota, back to Cosworth in 2010, thereafter to Renault and Mercedes.

There were false dawns, dashed hopes and a two-year change of fortune when Mercedes hybrid power helped Williams achieve third in the constructors’ championship in 2014 and 2015. Under Claire Williams and Pat Symonds things appeared to have recovered during those seasons; Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas even managed a front-row lock-out in Austria, 2014.

Just as with Pastor Maldonado’s outlier win for Williams at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, however, those results flattered to deceive. Soon overtaken by Red Bull and Force India, Williams fell to fifth in the championship for two years. Since then it’s fallen off a cliff, finishing 10th in four of the last five seasons, scoring no points at all in 2020.

The reasons for the decline are varied. A lack of succession planning in technical or commercial leadership, a dearth of sponsorship, results leading to a smaller share in F1’s prize fund, a lack of investment in talent and technology, perhaps a touch of corporate hubris.

Williams led the pack at Austria in 2014, but those days now seem a long time ago

Photo by: Sutton Images

A question of culture

The culture within Williams has been questioned from time to time. A tendency to point fingers internally, an underlying resistance to change. Back in 2014, head of performance engineering Rob Smedley told Autosport: “Perhaps Williams was guilty in the past… of having a bit of a blame culture on the technical side. When you have a blame culture, people spend 60-90% of their effort covering what they have done rather than doing anything positive and understanding the problem, making the car go quicker or making operations slicker.”

It was a topic to which Capito returned when speaking to this magazine in 2021, admitting that there was a tendency towards blame and a reluctance to change. He said: “What I have found is that a lot would say, ‘Oh, this is the Williams way, this is how we always did it,’ and that had to be overcome.”

Williams has lacked neither talent nor intellect in technical leadership. Sam Michael led the charge during the noughties, departing in 2011. At the time there were suggestions that his approach was too ‘old school’ in that all key decisions came across his desk and often resulted in a bottleneck.

Only with Dorilton’s support on strategy, funding and timescales can Vowles be expected to tackle the complex issues facing Williams as it tries to return to competitiveness

Michael was replaced by Mike Coughlan who, in turn, handed the technical reins over to Symonds in 2013. It was he who oversaw the stronger showings in 2014/15. Symonds left at the end of 2016, later replaced by the highly regarded Paddy Lowe. One of F1’s most experienced and successful technical directors, Lowe had started his career at Williams before spending 20 years at McLaren, then four years at a dominant Mercedes as executive director.

Lowe endured two very unhappy years and both the FW41 and FW42 proved to be uncompetitive, relegating the team to dead last. “The less said about it the better,” is his summary.

Regime change

In terms of executive leadership, Adam Parr was CEO from 2006 onwards, later becoming chairman during the period when Toto Wolff became an investor, board member and ultimately executive director. Alex Burns became CEO under Parr, but both they and Wolff were gone within a year, leaving Claire Williams to battle on, now with former Jaguar Land Rover executive Mike O’Driscoll in the CEO role.

In June 2020 McLaren’s former chief operating officer Simon Roberts was appointed as managing director, then promoted to team principal in September following the Williams family’s decision to sell the team to Dorilton Capital. After Dorilton appointed Capito as CEO, a restructuring of the team led to Roberts being replaced in the role of team leader by Capito himself. That restructuring also led to Capito’s former VW Motorsport colleagues Demaison and Sven Smeets being appointed technical director and sporting director respectively.

Dorilton’s decision to part company with both Capito and Demaison last December surprised and shocked. Once again the leadership reset button had been struck.

The departure of Capito and Demaison in December took many by surprise and leaves Williams still without a technical director

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Capable, stable leadership is beneficial, so regular upheavals tend to be symptomatic of wider issues. This is something Vowles is aware of, having worked for two decades in Brackley as his employer transitioned from BAR to Honda, then Brawn to Mercedes.

“Any organisation, irrespective of whether it’s an F1 team or otherwise, cannot be a high-performing outfit if you (a) take money away from it and (b) basically have such disruption across a number of years that you end up in a poor situation,” says Vowles. “That’s where Williams is. It’s not for lack of good people, it’s just simply lack of stability.”

Vowles’ first order of business will be to understand what precisely Dorilton expects him to achieve, including the timescales, targets and financial resources available. Seeing eye to eye with Dorilton’s Matthew Savage, one of Williams’ three directors alongside former racer turned hedge fund entrepreneur James Matthews and Mark Biddle, the team’s legal counsel, is critical.

“Every time we spoke, both of us bounced the same ideas off each other,” says Vowles of his job interview with Savage. “I believe in future generations, and graduates, in bringing the brightest and best of them to the organisation. I believe in empowerment, I believe in leading with intent. All of these things were mirrored during the course of the interview and what became abundantly clear was we have the same beliefs in things.

“I highlighted the approximate investment required for us to move forward, and it wasn’t a concern. Those are the things that really put me in a situation where I understand what my direction would be.”

No quick fix

Only with Dorilton’s support on strategy, funding and timescales can Vowles be expected to tackle the complex issues facing Williams as it tries to return to competitiveness. Realistically, the new technical era commencing in 2026 offers a deadline and goal for the team to work towards, leaving 2024 and 2025 to put in place the technologies, people, systems and processes needed to make a significant step.

“The team has, over the past 15 years, been through a tremendous amount of difficulty, financially and otherwise, and it’s survived through all of that,” says Vowles. “It’s just survival compared with other organisations which have finance. That’s the luxury I had prior to joining [from Mercedes]. As a result of that, you have these stark differences between where we are today and where we need to be in the future.

As new team principal, Vowles will have to succeed where other experienced operators before him missed the mark

Photo by: Williams

“The pathway is, to a certain extent, a number of years required to get some of the core facilities to the level required to compete at the front. That’s not the work of six or 12 months. We’re in a position where we’re lacking key technical personnel and the team is definitely under strain at the moment to ensure we’re filling those voids as best we can.”

Concerns about the team’s culture have, quite naturally, reached Vowles. Formula 1 is a close-knit community and news, whether good or bad, travels fast in motorsport valley. When people change teams they carry with them insights into current and previous employers.

Of the team’s reputation for being resistant to change, Vowles says: “I think the belief on that has changed as a result of everyone seeing the results that have been achieved over the past few years. I’m not sure it’s so much in the way described as much as there’s people that haven’t had their eyes opened to what excellence is.”

Given his technical background, it will be essential for him to understand what commercial director James Bower needs to build a sponsorship portfolio which, when added to the prize monies, enables the team to become profitable

Excellence is something Vowles understands from his time at Mercedes.

“To break into the top three is incredibly difficult,” he says. “They have resources beyond your dreams. They have the best people on the grid, and as you become better and better at what you do you become more cost-cap efficient.”

In 2021 Williams employed 755 staff. Some weren’t born when the team was winning world championships. Not that the systems and processes which assured success in the 1980s and 1990s have much relevance today.

Important gaps to fill

Vowles appears keen to appoint a technical director who is fully in tune with contemporary F1 and not, as with Demaison, someone from outside the category.

“I’m a firm believer in fundamentally ensuring that we have growth within our sport. There are some incredible individuals who are ready to be technical directors,” he says. “First and foremost, it’s someone with F1 experience, it’s not going to be someone from outside.”

Williams has made encouraging on-track gains this year, arguably second only to Aston Martin, but more is required

Photo by: Williams

Having personally experienced coming up against the barrier of career development at Mercedes, a point Wolff acknowledged, Vowles is conscious that there are others desperate to have the opportunity to have a crack at the top job of technical director.

“It could be someone who has been in the role or perhaps wants a change in scenery, or someone who has really been up against the glass ceiling, ready and waiting and has all the ability to do so, but hasn’t had the opportunity.”

While the recruitment of key technical staff is a priority, Vowles will also need to address the requirements of the team’s commercial department. Given his technical background, it will be essential for him to understand what commercial director James Bower needs to build a sponsorship portfolio which, when added to the prize monies, enables the team to become profitable.

Williams has a formidable history and heritage, evidenced by the museum and conference centre located on its leafy Oxfordshire campus. It ought to be possible to create a compelling offering with which to lure potential sponsors, particularly at the current time. This is another reason the team must drag itself off the bottom of the rankings. Potential sponsors respond well to a little on-track success.

In 2020 Williams’ losses were a significant £58m and, while these reduced to £12m in 2021, the company borrowed £45m from its owners. The company’s auditors noted that Williams has cumulative losses of £184m to set against future profits, an indication of the extent of the financial difficulties which have undermined previous attempts to stem the team’s decline.

If Vowles’ to-do list isn’t long enough, he also has to come to grips with dealing with a wider range of demands on his time. From shareholders and staff through to tier one suppliers, Mercedes among them, F1, the FIA, sponsors, media and, yes, even fans. As with other recent team principal appointees from a technical background, it will be fascinating to see how he responds to the challenge of becoming a business leader.

Enjoying a strong relationship with Wolff, Vowles also knows many of the other team bosses. But, while there has been plenty of initial support, he isn’t naive about joining F1’s infamous Piranha Club.

“I have very good relationships up and down the paddock with most team principals and, thus far, everyone has been supportive,” he says. “That may change in time…”

Will Vowles be able to hold his own in F1's piranha club and end the cycle of upheaval that has plagued Williams?

Photo by: Motorsport Images