There’s a palpable difference between the Williams James Vowles took over and the Williams team now, and their new FW47 car represents so much more than a potential on track improvement. Instead, it’s the culmination of their rebuild journey so far, making this launch season a real milestone and an opportunity to ask whether the James Vowles-effect is real…

When James Vowles arrived at Williams in 2023, he was shocked to find that they’d been using an Excel spreadsheet to track their car build – a stark contrast to how things were done at the giant of Mercedes, where he’d come from.

It was reported that the spreadsheet itemised the entire car build package over 20,000 cell entries in a single document. In many ways this process seemed to represent the state of affairs as Vowles took over – the team was underfunded, underdeveloped and suffering on track as a result.

That last point is why Vowles revealed this to media and fans, to help them understand why the team had struggled to be more than inconsistent points scorers over 2023. It also pointed to the scale of the project he had taken on in vowing to get Williams back to the front.

2026, ‘27 and ‘28 became key time points in Vowles’ aims – and they still are – with the major regulation shift being a huge opportunity for the team to make moves up the grid. As such, 2024 and 2025 were and are about progress and improvement, but importantly without expectation. Vowles has consistently referred to these years as “the journey” and not the destination.

Significant work has been done behind the scenes to aid in this journey, with Vowles revealing that there have been changes in “infrastructure, culture, people” and the “commercial” side that mean their Grove factory is now a “different world” in his eyes. 

“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…”, he explained to Autosport.

Though the team are still on that journey, these improvements are already being felt in their preparation for the 2025 season – including their car build – and it already seems to be a step up on last year.

Car weight became a symbol of sorts of where Williams were in terms of car build infrastructure and processes last season. They began 2024 with a car that was overweight to the cost of around 4-5 tenths a lap, estimated to equate to around 15kg. This was the case at least until Imola where weight-reducing upgrades were brought in.

But interestingly, this problem was actually a result of car build process changes in the search for longer term benefits. Williams took 14kg out of the chassis over the winter, but as a result of the time this took had to add an “enormous amount of weight” back in through the use of metal parts rather than the optimal carbon fibre.

While this of course cost them lap time, Alex Albon also later commented that it could have impacted the amount of damage they suffered in early season crashes. Heavier parts mean more force through the monocoque in the event of an impact, and the team had no spare chassis early on either. At the Australian Grand Prix, for example, this meant the team had to sideline Logan Sargeant to give his chassis to Albon as the damage his had suffered in a practice crash was too extensive.

But this year, the FW47 is on weight from the outset. This will not only impact performance and lap time from the get go, but also their bandwidth for development over the early stages of the year as upgrades can be focused on performance not weight reduction. 

The FW47 was also ready on time – a factor that seems simple but is reflective of the progress made at the team. In 2024, Williams launched with a show car and delayed their shakedown until they got to Bahrain as a result of the aforementioned chassis developments and breaking their existing technology cycles over the winter. In 2025, the car was one of the first to not only be launched but also to be driven on track, openly in front of media, fans and a worldwide virtual audience. The confidence this takes is a clear sign of the progress that’s been made in just 12 months.

An on time launch is one thing, but continuing this momentum over a 24 race season is another, and last year Williams’ season was plagued by one major problem – on track incidents.

They suffered a devastating level of crashes – 17 in 24 races – and no team is built to cope with the impact of this level of damage on development, budget or parts availability. It reached a head at the later end of the season, where parts are already running low, with 6 crashes over 4 race weekends. The incredibly tricky conditions in Brazil saw Albon and Colapinto suffer a collective three incidents in just one day.

At the time, James Vowles spoke about the effects of this on their parts availability, and it became clear that Williams had to run older specification parts just to have cars in the races. This no doubt impacted their ability to perform over the season, but especially in this crucial late-phase, and they became resigned to 9th in the standings. Although Vowles purposefully lacked expectations for their finishing position in this ‘journey year’, he did admit that these issues were a “distraction away from ‘25”.

“No one here would have accounted – I hope, anyway – for this amount of attrition this late on in the season,” Vowles told press before the Qatar Grand Prix. “The implication is you have to take a little bit away from next year’s cost cap – that’s the frustration behind it.

“What we’re talking about is a few hundreds of thousands that I wish we weren’t spending this year that we could spend next year.”

Throughout though, Vowles remained realistic in his reaction and how this attrition related to his longer term aims. “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,” he explained to Autosport. 

Some steps to prevent this issue continuing beyond the middle of the 2024 season were taken at the time, namely on the driver side, with Logan Sargeant being replaced by Franco Colapinto from the Italian Grand Prix in September. But again James Vowles had his eyes on the longer-term, and had already secured Williams’ future driver lineup in Carlos Sainz, to be paired with Alex Albon.

Carlos Sainz is signed to Williams on a multi-year deal, extending beyond the end of 2026, a deal that appears to match that of Alex Albon. This gives Williams driver stability beyond the next year and the benefit of this stability is one thing, but where the lineup is of two experienced, fast, consistent drivers then the benefit is further compounded.

Sainz is a four-time race winner, Williams’ first race winning driver since Felipe Massa who left the team in 2017. Though these wins are demonstrative of his on track experience, maybe more critical to his time at Williams is the fact that Sainz has improved every team he’s been with.

And this is exactly why James Vowles chased his signature, even before he was announced to be leaving Ferrari in early 2024. “In the short space of time that I’ve got to know him properly, he drives the team forward,” explained Vowles.

“He wants to spend every minute of his time that he can do to make this team more and more successful. And that’s a combination that is not necessarily available up and down the grid.” Importantly though, Vowles also feels he has this in Alex Albon, saying he is “built the same way” as Carlos.

This is now the most experienced driver lineup in terms of grand prix starts that Williams has had this century and also the most evenly split lineup in terms of experience, with Albon holding 33.5% of their total race starts and Sainz holding 66.5%.

The ability to secure a line up like this is something reflective of a team’s bigger picture, and something that’s only been afforded to Williams in recent years.

They have been able to move away from a need to have low driver salary but high commercialisation ahead of this year – something that impacted their driver decisions for a long time – thanks to increased financial stability and improved money management. 

The Dorilton Capital takeover in 2020 secured the future of the team which had been family owned from its inception to that point, but also injected finances to a level that had not been possible in the years preceding the sale.

Prior to the Dorilton £134m deal, Williams had recorded a loss of £13m for the 2019 season and ex-Deputy Team Principal Claire Williams (daughter of founder Frank Williams) has spoken of how race seats are a key asset that an F1 team can ‘sell’ to recoup such losses.

Even where drivers are there on merit and not as ‘pay drivers’, rookies are undoubtedly cheaper and so a favourable option for a team in financial trouble. Williams went down this road from 2017 to 2020, and brought on Lance Stroll, Sergey Sirotkin, Nicholas Latifi and George Russell as rookies in this time.

Making driver decisions for a team in a difficult financial position comes down to a balance between commercial possibilities and therefore potential income, driver experience and therefore salary, and on track potential and therefore prize money. The weight and importance of each of these factors, among others, is impacted by the team’s context at that time.

But this context for Williams has improved. Since Dorilton’s purchase of the team in 2020 for £152m, it’s reported that they’ve invested an additional over £400m into the team as of October last year. In that same month, 100 million shares were offered to investors at a value of £1 each, raising £100m to use to further the team’s growth and value in comparison to others on the grid.

Williams also extended contracts with key sponsors like Duracell, whose faith in the team could have helped attract further investments from global corporations as the team is no longer viewed as an opportunity for cheap advertisement at the back of the grid and instead as an underdog with well planned future growth.

And ahead of the 2025 season they’ve secured their first title sponsor in years in Atlassian, a deal James Vowles says is “the biggest partnership” they’ve ever had.

These partnerships are more than just a financial boost for the team, they show that large companies see a future in the team that they want to associate themselves with and this can have a reciprocal effect –  drivers with experience and results want to go to stable teams, and having sustainable sponsorship and funding makes a team more attractive to these drivers. In working to resolve their financial footing, Williams has become a team that drivers like Carlos Sainz can see a future at.

Beyond the sponsorship deals, there are others that impact a driver’s own choice to join a team too, and it’s important to remember that these negotiations and decisions are two-way, especially for drivers of a certain pedigree.

For example, Williams’ extension of a technical deal with Mercedes that sees them supplied with power units, gearboxes and suspension beyond the 2026 regulations is believed to have been instrumental in their signing of Sainz. Though it was early on in the 2026 preparation process when he put pen to paper, rumblings of positive feelings about the Mercedes power unit versus Audi’s or Red Bull/Ford’s, for example, no doubt impacted his decision.

The foundations of some of these relationships were laid before Vowles’ arrival, but his decision to continue them and to use them in the correct way for the team’s development is critical in reassuring the team and their drivers that they are heading in the right direction under the right leader.

It’s also not particularly bold to say that without Vowles, there’s a very slim chance Sainz would have been secured. The signature on the paper is one thing, but Vowles is acutely aware of the fact he has to now “demonstrate to him, the team, and the world that [Williams are] on the right path.”

Vowles’ transparency about almost every factor behind his revival of one of F1’s most historic and successful teams is to be admired. Where other teams may look to hide these details away from the media, he says it’s important to not only hold the team accountable but also to show where they’re coming from and where they’re going to. 

It’s incredibly difficult not to get on board the Vowles ‘hype train’ – he has an infectious enthusiasm about the project – and the effect he’s had on the team in just two years of leadership is palpable. From the feeling and optimism of their pre-season events to the praise they’re earning from fans, it’s all a trickle down effect of the steps put in place by Vowles, Dorilton and the whole team.

The Vowles’ effect is real, and Williams’ future looks bright.