Williams boss James Vowels made a bold statement in the Jeddah paddock on Friday, that his team had now switched all regular resources usually allocated for in season development to the 2026 car. With twenty rounds of the 2025 Formula One season remaining, this if true would be a brave choice given the start Williams has had to the year so far.
The historic British Formula One team has collected 50% more constructors’ than Red Bull’s six over the years but fell away from the leading pack in F1 more than twenty years ago. Being a Mercedes customer, the team received a boost in 2014/15 when the all conquering new V6 turbo hybrid power unit built by Brackley saw them finish each season in third place.
Yet as the other power unit manufacturers caught up, the failings on the chassis side of the Williams cars saw them slump to being plumb last from 2018-2020. They were then sold to US financial business Dorilton Capital in 2020 for a reported $200m who may not have realised exactly what they had purchased.
Dorilton appeared flummoxed by how to progress having completed the deal, using an association with the British royal family to bolster the executive board. Their appointment of German motorsport manager, Jost Capito, was surprising for many in the F1 paddock given his brief motorsport successes were with VW in the world rally championship back before he left to join McLaren in September 2016.
Capito served just four months with the Woking based F1 team before it was announced in December 2016 he was leaving by mutual consent. Then after an apparent four years in the wilderness, Capito was to be appointed has the team principal of Williams.
Forbes reports in 2022 that Jost Capitol’s philosophy was to lead from the front and so “to learn about becoming an effective leader, he read up on business and leadership books.” If that alone was not enough to set off the alarm bells, then nobody at Dorilton was listening.
In fact Capito instigated a “listening tour” of the Williams F1 team where he prided himself. He spoke with managers, drivers, factory workers, engineers and even the janitors in an attempt to build team spirit under the philosophy of a ‘no blame’ culture.
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The Williams boss enjoyed a honeymoon season with the team in 2021 as for the first tine in four years they were not last and indeed finished ahead of Alfa Romeo-Sauber and Haas F1. Yet a cataclysmic year for Williams in ’22 saw them claim just eight points and finish way behind AlphaTauri who were next up the road with almost five times the points of the historic British racing marque.
The emperors clothes were clearly missing and Dorilton now coming to understand what life was like owning one of the lowly F1 outfits sacked the German and replaced him with a through and through Mercedes man. James Vowles had spent his entire post graduate career at the Brackley based F1 team, known as British American Racing when he joined in 2001.
He remained as the team morphed into Honda, then Brawn and finally Mercedes, rising through the ranks to become one of the most senior team members. In fact it was believed he was being groomed as Toto Wolff’s successor as the Austrian considered stepping down from his role as team principal following the ‘disaster’ of 2021.
Vowles is a mathematician by trade, not an engineer, and his first tranche of applications to a variety of Formula One outfits around the turn of the millennium met with a 100% rejection rate. Some suggested he retrain as an engineer, but Vowles persistent nature saw him find an in with BAR which he has clearly maximised over the next quarter of a century.
Following the largesse of Honda’s works team, Vowles was catapulted into a stark contrast with Brawn GP, who had practically no money. Yet from 2010 he grew with the Mercedes F1 project understanding the investment and tools required to make a front running F1 team.
The advent of the cost cap means most of the F1 outfits now have the same budget to go racing, but there are those who need to spend hundreds of millions updating ageing facilities and replacing excel spreadsheets with proper manufacturing tracking software.
This is the project James Vowles has taken on – and appears to be revealing in. His visionary and leadership skills were evident when he snatched top F1 driver Carlos Sainz from under the noses of two works teams F1 programmes in Audi and Renault.
As head of strategy for Mercedes, Vowles came into regular conflict with Lewis Hamilton, who aggressively questioned his pit stop calls from time to time. Yet his role at Williams seems a perfect fir for him and the team as he battles with forcing the bigger boys to allow Williams incremental investment allowances so they can catch up somewhat to the rest of the field’s HQ facilities.
Vowles is now stating that Williams will continue to try and understand their 2025 car better each race weekend, but that any upgrades not already signed off will not make it off the drawing board in Grove. Yet Williams look to be racey this season, and after round one in Melbourne they were fourth in the constructors’ table even ahead of Ferrari.
The team now sits in sixth place, just one point behind the over delivering Haas F1 outfit, who had a remarkable haul of points in China due to the disqualification of the Ferraris. Yet this weekend the team look to be much stronger than their US owned rivals and are genuine contenders for the sport outside the big four come the end of the year.
With so much prize money at stake, are Williams really turning off their development programme for 2025 so early in the year? Or is this just a bluff from James Vowles, who has been known to pull out of nowhere the odd pair of aces in his amateurs poker career?
It could be that Vowles has had a difficult conversation with Dorilton, asking them to make up the short fall in prize money should the team finish in the lower regions of the championship this year. After all their car design baseline following testing looks to be as good as the rest of the bottom six teams, something which will carry them through to a certain extent as the season develops.
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Further, the smaller teams rarely make huge leaps forward with their development programmes mid-season and it could be Vowles is gambling with Williams good start to the year, knowing that Carlos Sainz is yet to fully get comfortable with the car and will only improve.
Yet there is a sneaking suspicion that the Williams boss may be bluffing. With 2026 being one of the biggest regulation changes in F1 history, the pecking order with new engines and new chassis coming on stream is completely unknown.
Is it it really worth Williams taking the gamble to shut down their best chance of a top five finish in the championship, in the hope they along with Mercedes ace the incoming new chassis and engine regulations.
The catch up Williams are playing in modernising their ageing infrastructure is not affected by where the team finish in the title race, as capital expenditure is governed serqparetly from the F1 annual cost cap spend. This will continue regardless of where Williams finish this season and is the most important factor in the teams hopes of challenging for race wins in the future.
With Haas currently punching above their weight, Williams longer term challenger this year is likely to be the sleeping giant that is Aston Martin. They’re new state of the art wind tunnel came online just a handful of weeks ago and team boss Andy Cowell said this weekend they are working on developing both the 2025 and 2026 cars in their new facility.
Whilst the Racing Bulls look to be at the races with their 2025 car design, rookie Isack Hadjar has a lot to learn and Liam Lawson is yet to recover from his nightmare start and demotion from the Red Bull team. Sauber-Audi appear set to be last once again as the marriage not yet made in heaven stumbles on. Alpine despite the influence of maverick Flavoi Briatore appear set to struggle once again due to their under powered Renault engines.
Maybe, just maybe Vowles is then telling the truth having examined the strength of his competition and is rolling the F1 dice on 2026. Sainz and Albon are the best driver lineup outside the top four teams and it could be the hope of a season of success finally for Williams, will rest more heavily on their shoulders than they initially were led to believe.
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The speculation over Max Verstappen’s Formula One future took another turn in Jeddah. With Red Bull sitting third in the constructors’ title race and their RB21 at times just the fourth fastest of the front runners on the grid this year, speculation is growing that should the Milton Keynes based team fail to give the world champion a car to claim his fifth title this season, he will be off elsewhere in search of future glory.
Max is no stranger to these kinds of rumours, which heightened during last years drought of ten consecutive race wins. However, the latest round of speculation was fired up by Red Bull advisor Dr. Helmut Marko who said ahead of the Saudi Grand Prix: “Upgrades are needed for Max to win his fifth world title,” he told Formel1.de. “That is our big goal and the whole team is working hard on it.
“Of course every top driver has an exit clause if performance is not good. But they are all tuned differently”. When asked if the F1 summer break in August was the earliest point in time where Verstappen could enact any such clause, Marko replied: “Yes, that’s the time window.”….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.
