Williams are on the up and team boss James Vowles promised in Montreal further improvements in the coming races as the next round of upgrades are fitted to the car. They have been in F1 for some 45 years and a recent survey suggests they pole ahead of everyone else as the fans most loved ‘second team’. much of this side to their history.
Their new team boss has raised the profile of the team, claiming he believes his team is the place for Carlos Sainz rather than the to be Sauber Audi team or even Mercedes. James Vowles has also claimed he has invited Adrian Newey to return to the team where he found his first success in Formula One.
Williams best recent result in F1
Vowles impact on Williams immediateIn terms of race starts, the team from Grove sits third in the all time list. 893 times a Williams Car has taken the to the grid, behind only Ferrari (1083) and McLaren (995). Five Grand Prix ago, Red Bull (119) finally overtook the total number of wins by Williams (114).
The last Grand Prix win for the British sporting marque was in Spain 2012 when Pastor Maldonado delivered a shock victory on Frank Williams birthday, but the team was in headlines for more than just the win in Barcelona as a fire broke out in their garage.
It was only two years ago that Williams finished the 2022 season with its fourth wooden spoon in the F1 constructors championship since 2018, an almost unimaginable decline for a team that once dominated the sport.
Team boss Jost Capito was dismissed and Mercedes’ James Vowles was recruited for the 2023 season to improve the fortunes of the Grove based squad. Having finished bottom of the pile in 2022 Vowles had an immediate impact with Williams finishing in P7. The team had been awarded the wooden spoon four times since 2018.
In Canada Vowles went public stating their number one driver target for 2025 was Carlos Sainz, although Toto Wolff would like him to take their academy protege Kimi Antonelli. Experienced designer Pat Fry joined the team for 2024 and Vowles now claims a raft of other big names will be announced as joining the team over the next few weeks.
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20-30 F1 personnel with “huge accolades” joining Williams
“We’re not yet unfortunately in a position to announce these, but when we do start to announce who we have signed, they’re going to see big names recognised by a lot of people,” says the Williams team principal.
The new hires range across the organisation with new recruits set for the technical organisation with both aerodynamic and mechanical skills.
“In the background there’s a number of really great signings that will slowly start edging out into the world. And not small numbers,” he continued. “I think we’re at about 20, 30 people now that have huge accolades in the sport and will contribute towards the success of Williams. We’re in a good position.
The contractual terms in F1 usually mean senior people who resign from a team for another spend a considerable time on garden leave.
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“It’s always slower than you’d like it to,” Vowles reveals. “You’d like people through the door tomorrow. But what I’ve done is made sure we wait for the right people, and then sign them and bring them in.”
Vowles outlined in Canada, “This isn’t the Williams of old,” and the team’s commercial director James Bower had earlier revealed such was the rude health of Williams’ finances, they are now able to spend up to the cost cap limit set for all teams by the FIA.
The ex-Mercedes man reveals it was the “hundreds of millions of dollars” the owners Dorital Capital are spending on improving the ageing infrastructure and equipment which was the reason he was persuaded to leave Mercedes.
Recently Vowles made confident predictions about their chances of recruiting Ferrari reject, Carlos Sainz and that this demonstrated the team was not the Wiliams of old, taking pay drivers to bolster the team’s coffers.
“Best driver lineup” claims Vowles
“The fact that we have Sainz on our list [of potential drivers for 2025] will certainly show you that this isn’t how we’ve performed of late,” Vowles told Sky F1 in Canada.
“We are prepared to have a driver line-up that I think is going to be one of the best on the grid, if it’s achieved, and that’s a different era that we’re going into.”
Having registered their best result in the constructors championship last year, Williams made a poor start to this season with Alex Albon scoring their only two points in Monaco. Yet they sit ahead of the pointless Kick Sauber outfit and are just three points behind Alpine who have internal problems and further two points behind Haas F1.
“We were a team that were tenth for many years,” admitted Vowles. ”Yes, last year we were seventh and we started this year poorly, [but] keep an eye out for us.
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“We’re now starting to put performance to the car race by race, and this is a different entity to what it was before.”
The Williams boss claimed the team has started a journey from a year ago when he joined the team and they are moving forward in all aspects of the organisation.
Logan Sargent is an Achilles heel for the team and has failed to score points except by default when Hamilton and Leclerc were disqualified after the US Grand Prix in Texas last year.
The FIA has made changes to the super-license criteria required for a new driver to enter F1, which would mean rising star and Mercedes academy driver, Kimi Antonelli could replace Sargent for next season.
Antonelli skipped F3 and is racing in F2 this season. He is currently ahead of his more experienced team mate, Oliver Bearman who made an impressive debut in F1 in Jeddah when Carlos Sainz was stricken with appendicitis. Bearman scored 6 points in Saudi Arabia, finishing ahead of Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton.
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F1 teams rebel over FIA 2026 regulation
Formula One’s governing body is embarking on the biggest regulation change in the history of the sport for 2026. Not only are the power unit specifications being radically altered with bio fuel thrown into the mx, but the chassis and aerodynamics of the F1 cars is undergoing a reset after the big car design rule changes in 2022.
Some experienced F1 observers believe the FIA have bitten off more than they can chew and the result of the new rules for 2026 will spread the field significantly. One team will probably ace both sets of new regulations and we could see another year or two of dominance while the rest catch up… READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
