James Vowles Reveals Williams' Hidden Progress Amid Crash-Ridden 2024 Season
Williams Racing team principal James Vowles spoke on the team's unseen progress during a crash-ridden 2024 season, which led to a considerable increase in costs for new parts. Despite finishing 9th in the Constructors' Championship, Vowles pointed out that the FW46 F1 car had the pace to reach Q3 on multiple occasions, but crashes consistently prevented the team from capitalizing on that potential.
Despite the crashes being "the story of the year," the team boss pointed out areas of progress that would ultimately help Williams become a top team in the new era of regulations that begins in 2026. Vowles believes that despite the challenging year, behind-the-scenes upgrades to technology, hires from Ferrari, Red Bull, and Alpine, and ongoing improvements in various areas are happening, though they may not be visible to viewers. Revealing the unfolding world behind the scenes at Williams, Vowles told Motorsport.com:
“The main thing is this: a lot of the really positive bits the world can't see.
“I can walk around the building and just see excellence that has race-winning pedigree all a part of our team now. I can see a change in what we're doing with infrastructure, culture, people, commercial even – it's just a different world.
“I've always said the journey is 2023, ‘24, ’25 – they're just progression and the track results won't necessarily reflect the really big changes going on behind the scenes.
“Do I think ninth fully reflects what we've achieved? No. There’s some really good technology gains coming through and there’s some really great things coming in the future. That’s what my focus has been on.
“Does it frustrate me we’re ninth? Yes, absolutely, because I still like to come to the race weekend and get everything out of it, and we haven't this year.
"We've been really hurt by quite significant amounts of attrition. We've been hurt by [our] own changing technologies that produced a car that wasn't on the weight limit and we just haven't been able to show the world what we can do.
“And then you get the odd races where people can see, ‘Williams is able to get into Q3 pretty much the whole time’, but we’re not delivering it.
"That will always harbour frustration, but it's overwhelmed by the positive news behind the scenes. The only way the world will really see it is through progress now chunking in 2025, ‘26, ‘27.”
Considering that Williams made it to Q3 in qualifying on several race weekends before disaster struck both drivers, Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto, Vowles suggested that the team needs to get better at putting everything together. He added:
“I'm going to remember we were up there in second in Brazil qualifying before Alex had an accident.
“We were up there in Q3 potential in Las Vegas with Franco before we had an accident. I hate to always bring it back to an accident, but it’s the story of the year.
“We have to remember that the pace is there, but we're not delivering on it as well. And that's a team. I never put any onus on any one individual. That's the team that is fundamentally – we're not quite delivering it all together. And that's the secret behind it.
“We need everything to move forward together. You need your reliability, your design, your performance, your drivers, your holistic strategy, how it all comes together, to move forward at the right rate.”