Williams have announced former Mercedes motorsport strategist James Vowles as their new team principal, filling the position vacated by Jost Capito.
The team relieved Capito of his position as team principal after almost two years at the end of the 2022 season. Technical director Francois-Xavier Demaison was also let go at the same time.Vowles had been acting at Mercedes’ motorsport strategy director under team principal Toto Wolff for the past four seasons. He has spent his entire two-decade tenure in F1 at the Brackley-based team, including its previous identities as Brawn GP, Honda and BAR.
Vowles said it was an “honour” to be named as team principal for a team “with such an incredibly rich heritage” as Williams.
“The team is an icon of our sport, one I greatly respect, and I am very much looking forward to the challenge,” Vowles said.
He thanked Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff as he moved on from the team which swept every constructors championship between 2014 and 2021.
“Mercedes have been hugely supportive on my journey, and we part on excellent terms after over 20 years of working in Brackley,” said Vowles. “I am grateful for everything Toto and the team have provided, and it has been such a special experience to journey together through failure and success.
“Williams Racing have placed their faith and trust in me, and I will do the same in return. Williams has tremendous potential, and our journey together starts in a matter of weeks.”
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Matthew Savage, CEO of team owners Dorilton Capital, hailed the hiring of Vowles to lead the team into the new season.
“We are delighted to welcome James to Williams Racing,” said Savage. “He is one of the most highly respected talents in Formula 1 and will bring performance.
“As we continue our relentless pursuit for results, we believe that the appointment of James reinforces our dedication to ensuring we have energetic, experienced, and strong leadership as we move into the next phase of transforming Williams Racing.”
Toto Wolff praised Vowles’ contribution to Mercedes’ successes during his time with the team. “Having worked with him since I first joined the team in 2013, I know how diligent, capable and talented he is and have taken great satisfaction from watching James develop and grow over the past decade,” said Wolff.
“While we are naturally sad to be saying goodbye to such a capable member of the team, I have no doubts whatsoever that he has all the necessary skills to become a fantastic team principal in Formula 1. We wish him every success and are delighted that he will take this next step in his career with Williams, a strong technical partner of ours and one that has a place close to my own heart.”
Williams finished tenth and last in the constructors’ championship last season, scoring only eight points. The team will field Alexander Albon and rookie American driver Logan Sargeant in their two cars for the 2023 championship.
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T
13th January 2023, 12:26
A lot of synergy among all parties involved
You love to see it!
Good luck Vowles!!
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
13th January 2023, 12:32
Great get for Williams.
Mercedes have slowly lost every key member of their “dream team” much like Ferrari once lost theirs. It’ll be interesting to see if they will see a similar decline in performance as that Ferrari team then did over the coming years.
grat
13th January 2023, 13:29
To be honest, Vowles hasn’t impressed me as a team strategist. He’s overly conservative, relying on the computer models rather than what’s going on on track.
No other team has had their strategist on the radio apologizing to their driver during the post-race cooldown lap– and it’s happened multiple times under Vowles. Speaks highly of him as a person, yes– but not as a strategist.
I wish him luck, and hope he can bring some much needed guidance to the Williams team.
Frasier (@frasier)
13th January 2023, 13:41
+1
Ola Ray
13th January 2023, 14:15
Spot on
pastaman
13th January 2023, 15:29
Not sure the point of this comment, they didn’t hire him as team strategist
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
13th January 2023, 20:31
It has a point, since he’s talking about the dream team dissolving, implying he was a great strategist, the other person points out he isn’t, so it has relevance for merc indeed.
grat
13th January 2023, 23:54
As Esploratore said, it’s not so much the gain for Williams I was disputing, as the loss to Mercedes. Vowles may be a superb team principal– he’s risen up through the ranks at Brackley from the days of BAR. I just think he got into a habit of letting the combination of Mercedes chassis/PU and Lewis Hamilton do most of the work for him.
I’ll be interested to see if Rosie Wait is promoted– In 2021 when she went on maternity leave, Mercedes started tripping over itself on a regular basis.
T
13th January 2023, 14:18
ehh, I’m not too worried:
the difference between those two teams is the internal leader of succession and a pre-planned doomsday structure.
when Ferrari lost Mattia, someone outside Ferrari was appointed as a replacement
when Rebull poached Mercedes personnel, those spots were filled internally; there was no price to pay for acquainting the new hire, pre-existing synergies already exists and more importantly, the talent pool feels secure because they know as they accrue knowledge and grow they can achieve vertical movement. You can bet good money a lot of personnel at Ferrari feel slighted they were passed over for Vasseur but that’s a different discussion for another time.
even from the press releases, albeit just press releases, Wolff seems more proud of Vowles’ new appointment than shaken, its a bittersweet goodbye not a heartless petty one.
Mercedes will be fine, I’m sure the role has already been filled.
Robert Henning
13th January 2023, 18:56
Merc are already not fine and their engine isn’t as good. Part of it could be because the good ones got head hunted and decided working for RB is better for them.
T
13th January 2023, 19:20
its the new era of a regulation
this is what happens every single time there’s a new era of regulation.
it is suddenly not an indictment of Mercedes to fall behind, the structure and life cycle of these regulations are almost designed to disincentive domination.
“Merc” are fine:
Their engines suffered one forced DNF the entire season and their package made improvements
Most aware of their concept (read ground effect era) acknowledge that its the best, just super tricky to get right
While the “good ones” are/were on gardening leave prior to entering positions with triple salaries or roles that just either didn’t exist at Mercedes or were already filled, their counterparts slowly and surely elevated the package to the point that on a few occasions, a betting person would back a porpoising Mercedes over a stabler Ferrari.
“Merc” are fine.
Bob (@mp4-bob)
13th January 2023, 23:53
You’re confusing the Ferrari periods they’re talking about. They mean more mid 2000s at the end of Brawn’s leadership. It was very much the same thing where Ferrari promoted internally rather then hiring externally like they did now. Also, internal hiring is a lot more expensive since they need to train not only the replacement for whoever was poached, but also the replacement of whoever gets promoted and so on.
Most of your arguments are more reflective of their culture than their stability. You claim hiring internally is evidence of stable talent pool, however, it could also just as easily be due to overconfidence thinking they’re better then everyone else, and it also stops them from learning how other teams operate. It doesn’t say anything about their talent pool, but rather their culture. Heck, I couldn’t even point to their concept, which you use as further “proof”, to support the argument that they’ve become arrogant and overconfident, as did Ferrari. For example, you claim they’re better off because it’s the concept that is believed to have the most potential, however, everyone else rejected it because they believed that potential couldn’t be exploited. You could claim it’s arrogance that led Mercedes down that path thinking they’d be able to exploit it. I’m not claiming that that’s the case though and I’m not willing to go down a rabbit hole with that argument, I’m more pointing out that none of your points support your argument without using them as confirmation bias, they’re say a lot more about the culture then the talent.
Also, same with Toto, he’s not going to burn bridges with someone who didn’t blindside him, so I don’t know why you’re reading so much into this. Everyone would do the same thing, for example look at how Zak Brown is handling Seidl leaving.
Regardless, there’s a lot of similarities with the Schumacher-era Ferrari, however there is one main difference. And that’s that Toto doesn’t answer to anyone else, and there’s no power struggle. Ultimately, that was the biggest factor that caused Ferrari’s downfall. So I don’t necessarily agree with the others that it’s an identical situation, but your points don’t really support the contrary at all.
Jere (@jerejj)
13th January 2023, 12:39
Shocking. I didn’t see such a move coming at all.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
13th January 2023, 13:06
@jerejj Me neither. I read the headline twice, I didn’t see that coming at all. I think it makes a lot of sense though, he’s probably quite a coup for Williams. I’ve no idea what he’s like as a person, he seems to sit in the shadows a bit. But when he does crop up, I’ve always been impressed. I don’t know if he knows how to run an F1 team, but his resume would suggest that he might actually be a brilliant choice.
F1 is full of odd appointments and dismissals, but this makes a lot of sense to me. He might think ‘Well you can’t do worse than last’. And if Doriliton are actually keen to properly invest, it ticks plenty of boxes.
The challenges he must have come across between BAR / Honda, Making Brawn a thing with no budget, or anything really….. to the dominance of Merc. He’s seen a bit. I might be wrong, but I think Williams have done well here.
Boomerang
13th January 2023, 13:34
He was deeply upset by W13’s lack of performance. It was so obvious in his every video debrief last season. I’m sure he’s learned more last year than in two past decades combined. For that reason he’ll be great asset to Williams. What is happening to Williams in past decades was condensed in single season at Mercedes. He’s now acquainted to methodology how to overcome design flaws and steer the team in the right direction. That’s exactly what Williams team need now!
Robert Henning
13th January 2023, 18:57
Merc doing good PR is now evidence of success?
Boomerang
13th January 2023, 13:35
He was deeply upset by W13’s lack of performance. It was so obvious in his every video debrief last season. I’m sure he’s learned more last year than in two past decades combined. For that reason he’ll be great asset to Williams. What is happening to Williams in past decades was condensed in single season at Mercedes. He’s now acquainted to methodology how to overcome design flaws and steer the team in the right direction. That’s exactly what Williams team needs now!
Biker56 (@biker56)
13th January 2023, 21:24
Hey @Boomerang! You’ve come back again!
Witan
13th January 2023, 12:51
Ferrari being Ferrari didn’t have a full succession plan to keep the magic going while Wolff will have it all covered. Whether successfully or not, but I’d put money on him getting it right.
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
13th January 2023, 14:38
Witan,
I go even further and suggest that Toto doesn’t have to cover anything because he has carefully planned this move. He has been known to have his key figures secured by long terms contracts since the start of the hybrid era and will not refrain to execute those strict gardening leave clauses even for junior engineers. Wolff is a minor shareholder at Williams and it’s on his interest that they improve their competitiveness. In the meantime he’ll keep whoever takes over from James at Mercedes extremely motivated.
T
13th January 2023, 14:45
…let’s go even deeper down the rabbit hole:
this is a 4D chess move by Wollf to provide his eventual successor with concrete experience at the helm of another team
I mean the no gardening leave to too damning to ignore!!
Biker56 (@biker56)
13th January 2023, 21:29
Well, Toto has a lot of history with Williams, and there’s little chance of a title fight between the two teams this year, so why bother with ‘gardening leave’? Reading other articles and stuff on twitter, this looks like a good vibes win win for just about everyone, which is nice to see for a change.
Cristiano Ferreira
13th January 2023, 15:26
Sergeant… This is James.
Robert Henning
13th January 2023, 18:57
A weird appointment.
Never came across as someone who could lead a team but anyways, we shall see.
Jason (@jasonj)
13th January 2023, 23:30
I wish him all the best, but Williams hasn’t done well with ex-Mercedes staff. Good ol’ Paddy sent them to very back of the grid and without a car to practice with.
DonSmee (@david-beau)
15th January 2023, 13:00
Very interesting news!
I wish James success at Williams and I genuinely do hope he can turn that team around.
On a slightly different matter, Alex Albon better start looking for a new seat now. His RedBull benefactors have gone out of the nest and he’s an unwelcome remnant now in this new Mercedes B team.