How Williams team boss James Vowles assesses the starting position of his racing team before the 2024 Formula 1 season – and what goals he is sending his team into the races with.
Williams was seventh in the 2023 Formula 1 season and successfully prevailed against AlphaTauri, Alfa Romeo and Haas. So will the next step follow in 2024, so that teams like Aston Martin and Alpine might come within reach? This is “not realistic” for Williams team boss James Vowles, as he explains in an interview with “auto motor und sport”.
His reason: “I know the true distance [Aston Martin und Alpine] and I know our development speed. What we want to change is still too far away to allow us to take this step next year.”
Especially since the point gap between the aforementioned racing teams and Williams was significant: Williams finished the 2023 season in seventh place in the constructors’ championship with 28 points, while Aston Martin with 280 and Alpine with 120 points were well ahead.
But his team will at least get closer and “do better” in 2024, says Vowles. He is going into the new racing year “confidently”. Postscript: “But I won’t do anything that jeopardizes our long-term goal.” And that means establishing Williams again among the top teams in the medium term.
Why Williams shifted development early
2023 was a first step on this path; Williams has developed well, especially since the summer break, emphasizes Vowles. “With the exception of Suzuka, where we were definitely too slow, Singapore, where Perez shot us out of the points, and Brazil, where we were involved in a crash at the start, we scored points in every race until the finale.”
He saw a “completely different Williams team” in this phase than at the end of 2022 and beginning of 2023. “Because we managed to improve our package so that we were able to get into the points on our own. Two points here, two there,” says Vowles.
And that was expressly due to the driving performance of Alexander Albon, who did “an incredible job” with the FW45, and in a difficult situation: Williams had already slowed down development on the 2023 car.
Vowles explains: “We wanted to focus on 2024 early enough, even if there was a risk of being overtaken by Alpha Tauri.”
“I know that I asked a lot of my drivers and the racing team. They were supposed to defend seventh place with one arm behind their back. They took it as a challenge and fought. But I’m not interested in seventh, eighth or ninth place today, but about the big step tomorrow.”