James Vowles, Williams Team Principal: ‘The Plan to make Williams F1 World Champions…Again’ (Ep87)

0:00We're not fighting for a world championship, we're fighting for what was survival previously, now is strong results, maybe into a podium at some stage. For the first time with Williams, Carlos Sainz will stand on the podium. Vamos! Best podium in my career, guys. You cannot imagine how this tastes. Thank you so much. This is my first smooth operation. The secret sauce of Formula 1 isn't really a secret sauce. It's as simple as this. Performance drives everything. We only have two income sources. One's commercial revenue. One is from Formula 1 itself. And they both are based on, are you beating nine other teams?

0:31Simple as that. Culture is driven from values and behaviors. and the values that both Carlos and Alex have are exemplary. They're individuals where their ego doesn't take over. Williams is far bigger than me. I am just here to hold on to the shirt and put it into a better place. With Alex and Carlos, Williams is bigger than the two of them as well. Our job is to bring Williams back into winning ways. We've scored more points now to this point of the season. We did cumulatively between 2018 to 2024 because we weren't focused on this year. We were focused on long-term projects which are kicking in now, which are producing the performance that we have.

1:01I want to win with this team multiple world championships. We're not going to get there by slowly eking towards it. And I use the word to break everything for good reason. This isn't slightly scratching or slightly polishing what you've got. Throw it away and start again. But I'll give you the timeline to do it.

1:18Sometimes luck is on your side. And when we recorded this show the day before James flew out to Baku, we did not expect Williams to be up on the podium, delivering in real life what James was theoretically describing to us on the show. Podiums are, of course, part of the development plan, but not yet. However, on Sunday, Carlos Sainz delivered that first podium of the James Vowes era. When James came to see us at Business of Sport HQ last week, we talked through both what he has done to position the team for future success and what he still needs to do. In a sport that requires so many minds pulling together, utilising a vast array of talents, prospect of building what is popularly termed as winning culture could seem daunting.

1:56Where do you even start? For James, it was recognising that even in a sport of technology and science, people and culture are what makes you win. This weekend's result would place James ahead of where Williams should be. James has set expectations but don't get me wrong this result in Baku will have been celebrated in the halls of Grove because no matter how long term the strategy for success is these wins you pick up on the way are integral to showing the team that what they're doing is on the right path. And from James' perspective, though he'd never look at it like this that he's the man to deliver it for them.

2:30This is James Vowles on the business of Williams & F1 and a taste for you of what's to come. But first, some words from our valued partners. What if I told you that the same private equity deals that built sporting empires like Liverpool FC and the Golden State Warriors were now accessible to everyday investors? Well, meet Stride, the regulated digital platform that's democratising sports private equity. For the first time, both individuals and institutions can access exclusive opportunities in professional teams, leagues and the entire sports ecosystem that powers billions in global revenue. And here's why it matters.

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3:48James, it is so great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me here. I think we've spent a huge amount of time just off microphone talking about how important people are into the business of teams. And something you've done since you've taken over at Williams is really try and build a culture that not just reflects what you want the team to be, but also that people want to be a part of. So I don't think there's any better place to start than ask why that's so important to you as you look to rebuild Williams into one of the Formula One's biggest teams. it's in my experience culture drives everything so i'll give you examples what i mean by that um there's a passion that drives through williams that was not my creation it was created when i joined and it's fantastic to see but it's a passion that meant that often people will be doing what they believe to be right but ultimately actually it's very short-termist it's fighting a fire that's in front of you today and didn't allow us to do any more than survive when i joined And the way you take yourself from survival to a business operation using proper process structure, systems, etc.

4:48Is you need something that drives that in such a strong way. A message that drives in such a strong way that even if you don't have my voice, it's now driven by others and accelerated by others as well at the same time. And everyone's experience is different. But mine is that culture is that heartbeat that drives it in a far more powerful way than anything else. If you put a process in place, humans actually quite like working around processes and against it. but if that process is created because our culture is we want to be the best in the world at doing x y and z and actually this is just a method to be able to get there that actually pushes people more towards it than further away from it and the second bit is this continuous drive that's what formula one is it's this continuous drive for every millisecond to be found and perfected and that's cultural that has to be it's not something you're born with that has to be driven by an organization and if you look around you and you're surrounded by a thousand peers all pushing in the same direction looking for the same hopefully not the same in a second otherwise we're going to go around in circles quite literally but um very each one's just pushing the boundaries of what they're doing that effectively creates a momentum that i can just sit there and watch with pride as it happens i find it really interesting because when you first think about formula one and you look at what makes the everything so successful as you said it's the marginal gains it's how quick the car is that's what everyone talks about at the start of each year.

6:05So when you highlight people as the most important thing that drives these teams, it actually shows the uniqueness, I guess, of this sport, combining those two things in such a seamless way. Yeah, exactly. I mean, no more so than this year describing really those marginal games. We had games, we had eight tenths separating 20 cars in Monza. We had 90 milliseconds separating five cars. I mean, it's a period of time that I love it. You really have to be on your game to doing it. But now the statement of every millisecond matters has really got significance and impact. And going back to people, so it's not machines or technology or systems.

6:42Those are created by people who have an understanding of what we need to hit as an end goal and working together. And the second bit of it is to win championships. And I've been fortunate to win a good number of them now. The key is all about a thousand people, all 1000 people pointing the right way and working together. No one's fighting each other in the team. And And to be clear on that, that means whether you're in HR, finance, communication, podcasts, engineering, design office, you two have a place. All of that has to be working together. Otherwise, you're simply fighting each other more than anything else.

7:15And that's what culture drives. How was it when you take the move from a team that you've just highlighted where you've been consistently winning and then you go to a team which hasn't been winning and you want to be bringing a huge amount of that, but you also don't want to be the person that walks in and goes, at Mercedes, we used to do it like this. How do you find the balance between bringing the best of an organization, but also finding your own way? I think I hopefully haven't many times said at Mercedes, simply because it's the first way to piss people off more than anything else. And I don't think everything was done perfectly in Mercedes either, for that matter.

7:48But there's some great things that I've learned, and I've tried to take everything I can from it. And there's some great things that existed in Williams beforehand. I described one of them. This passion is enormous. So you don't want to stunt that. You don't want to stop it from happening. You just want to surround it in process system structure, data, and a long-term plan that allows us to think more than next week, which is where we started. And here's how you do it more than anything else. You present a vision that people will sign up to. So there's no point presenting a vision of we're going to win 10 championships and it'll start next year because zero people around me will sign up to it.

8:21It has to be a realistic timeframe when we can fix things, a realistic assessment of what we need to get into the right place in order to achieve that. and what I call lieutenants. But effectively, each individual, I have five people below me who I trust and believe in everything that they're saying. They mirror my views and thoughts and they're completely aligned with our strategy, our goals and our culture. They employ five people that mirror exactly that at the same time. And all of a sudden, culture doesn't come from my word because it doesn't. It doesn't. All I can do is mimic the behaviors I want.

8:50Culture comes from bottom up from the team, seeing by example and being led by example how we want to be as an organization. So to your point, what we've really done is structure, where do we want to be? What's the North Star? What's the milestones along the way? And how are we going to get there with realistic expectation for everyone? There will always be disbelief. So one of the first disbeliefs was, well, we're not going to get the investment. And the investment turns up and it turns up and it turns up. And Dalton have been fantastic in absolutely doing everything that we have demonstrated that we need to do and have done along that journey.

9:22And that brings everyone along with you at the same time. And I understand why that was everyone's fears. For 20 years, Williams didn't have the investment it needed. So there's going to be an amount of concern that that's the first barrier you get through. When you get through that, the next one is, well, we can't achieve this because of X, Y, and Z, or this isn't in the right place. And it's really just forming a structure and system around it all that they are in control of that. That is their accountability and responsibility. I'm there by their side. You tell me what I can do to help you and we'll get you there.

9:48But it won't be a lack of finance. We're in the right place on that one now. So it's going to be more around the time it takes us to get ourselves into a good place. can i ask when was the culture the worst and what did you do to correct it on day one of walking in i was caught out by how far away we were from benchmark in williams and it's an interesting word worse it was different it wasn't a bad culture it was people doing what they thought was right there wasn't individuals wanting to fight the business but it was short-termist it was just survival. A good example of this is I need to take this wishbone and this wishbone needs to get to the track.

10:26It was going to skip four processes by doing it, but I'm going to get it to the track. And that was the individual wanting to do everything right in their mind for the business. But the reality behind it is that wasn't the urgent items to get sorted for the track. X, Y, and Z are far more important. So if that helps you, it wasn't what I would call a bad culture. People weren't trying to destroy the business, but it was misaligned with actually how you construct the business that's properly focusing on medium and long-term goals to give us out the survival into the skylight. Let's talk about those medium and long-term goals because you've spoken publicly about how you're positioning success in the team, 26, 27, 28, maybe being the years that you really want to see that development.

11:06And I find that really interesting because, yes, it lays out a brilliant plan and it also sets an expectation amongst the team. but we all know that sports are results driven business and a huge part of that particularly when you're motivating a team is you want results to keep the team motivated zero points every weekend doesn't necessarily do that you've made huge strides this year alone which is fantastic but the real question around it is to me how much of that business side of Williams how much of the development of you as a team do you actually attach to to winning the secret source of Formula One isn't really a secret source it's as simple as this performance drives everything commercial revenue is, we only have two income sources.

11:45One's commercial revenue. One is from Formula One itself. And that both are based on, are you beating nine other teams? Simple as that. So everything has to be driven towards performance first, fundamentally. So sort of aligning to that. I'm going a bit backwards and I'll go into your question. The next element of things is that we, as an organization, the only way to get there, and I've said this before, I'm not interested in finishing eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth. It means literally nothing to me because it doesn't mean anything to me. But in my experience, and the good news is this is translating, as long as we focus on these long-term goals, and they're really succinct long-term goals, wrap data around everything, have this process, have this structure, we're going to invest here, we're going to invest in these at the same time, we're going to let everything else go, the car will still be quicker as a result of what we're doing because that long-term investment will just pick up some low-hanging fruit on the way here.

12:36And the proof of the pudding is this car, the 25 car that we've got now, we've scored more points now to this point of the season. We did cumulatively between 2018, I think it was, to 2024. So we've just done more than six seasons put together in one season. Why? The answer is because we weren't focused on this year. We were focused on, when I first started in 23, long-term simulation projects and development projects which are kicking in now, which are producing the performance that we have. This car actually wasn't in the wind tunnel for very long at all. Our focus has been on 2026, 27 and 28 for exactly those long-term reasons.

13:12So to your point and going back to what's our North Star, our North Star is I want to win with this team. That's why I've joined multiple world championships. We're not going to get there by slowly eking towards it. And I use the words break everything for good reason just to reset everyone's mindset on this isn't slightly scratching or slightly polishing what you've got. Throw it away and start again. but i'll give you the timeline to do it how much is the car how much is the driver um if the drivers are listening it's all you now that we've done that and they'll probably switch off the podcast now uh they were watching tiktok it was a short time the attention span is like where here's the best way i describe it um between the best car to the worst car on the grid is properly i mean these days it's less than that it's probably half a second or seven tenths now used to be a second and the driver in my experience is about between the best to the worst about a second and that's full ballpark so call it 50 50 if you want but that's actually not a true analogy of it that's being disingenuous to drivers because what the drivers do is they are the most expensive but also the best sensor that we have in the car they are able to detect what's going on in a way that your data won't pick up and to explain what i mean by that a really good example is we had a fundamental problem in the car when I joined, which is you just simply couldn't get the car turned into a corner with combined load on it.

14:36So you have to really break in a straight line and turn it. And when you look at the data, it says, yeah, but I can't see any of these problems. You're like, nope, because the driver's automatically optimized around what is the fastest way around that corner. So they are the sensor that will tell you things that you can't measure in data, but are limiting to it. And the right driver will allow you to very quickly understand where you need to be finding performance in your car very quickly and drive the direction of your development. So 50-50 is a really nice answer to it. It's actually more biased towards drivers.

15:05What did working with Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton, you know, in those years when you're at Mercedes, what did that teach you about working with drivers now you're a team principal? First and foremost, all drivers are, so let's go to those world champions that you just spoke about. Driving the car is so natural to them that they're not using nearly any of their brain power for doing it. What they are thinking about, they're all slightly different, but pretty much all have this in common. What they're thinking about is, hmm, car in front just locked their front right going into turn three.

15:37That just tells me they're a little bit on the limits, probably not break balance. Keep an eye out on that again. Okay, they have an inherent weakness on traction out of five. That gives me an opportunity. If I put the car slightly offset into six, I might be able to change their line into seven, eight, which gives me an opportunity need to take into nine where's my battery level that's slightly low the wind where's that coming from okay we're gonna have a headwind on the one design as well that's gonna be a good time to use it in other words what i've just described to you is happening in about a second in their brain they're these optimizing machines that are able to figure out what's happening with the car ahead the car behind what's happening with strategy and talk to us at the same time about what's going on and that's the difference the driving is so natural to them that that's the easy part in the grand scheme of things the thing that's just extraordinary is the amount of time there in the car as well to do that for like the endurance mindset that you have to have that complex chain of thought for so long correct and that's the other bit when you see them fatigued when they get the car it is physical fatigue it's mental fatigue as well it's enormous and now now you understand that you can start watching the race the really clever ones are the ones that they'll change their line four or five times when they're following a car to see where it's best to put their nose and unload one of the tires or help the cooling system and they're continuously optimizing that.

16:46And you can tell where they're close to the limit because when we talk to them, they go, stop talking to me now. They're just about saturating that limit. But that's not the driving. That's everything else that they're pulling together. So that's number one. Number two, and this will apply, I think, to any sport, the absolute very best of the best. When they make a mistake, they can completely, I can't even say the word, compartmentalize it effectively. So they can put that in a box and go, I know what that was. They're not going to try and make it up in the next two corners. That's gone. But I know what I have to do for the remainder of the lap to correct for that.

17:18It could have been me making a mistake or other factors. I'm going to correct for that. And if you look at tennis or sport or anything, it's the really strong candidates, the winning candidates, the ones that were able to do that. A bad shot is a bad shot. I'm not going to overcorrect for it going forward. It's the Roger Federer speech, wasn't it? Yeah, very similar to it. In fact, his speech resonated in that regard. But that's what these elite athletes are at the highest level. So then when you're working with Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon now, what are the biggest things that you're looking to bring to them to help them reach the potential in the Williams car?

17:47So if we start with Alex, when I met, I've known Alex since 2016. He was with me at Mercedes, then went on to Red Bull, but I've known him since he was much younger. Him and Lando and George all grew up together, which is quite a nice little story. You can see them have had a call huddling together as well. And what I knew of him at the time, fiercely quick, lacked some confidence in himself, didn't understand how good he really was, I think at times. And when I met him in 2023, he was uh he lacked belief in where he was i think he'd had a hard time pretty much going through the red bull system he had and and one year and williams hadn't necessarily helped him and my job in all of that is to create a shield around him let him know he is bloody good he is one of the top drivers in the sport i'll be by him side and give him a pedestal that allows him to grow as a result of it and you know he has the inherent skill but what i've done as a result of things i hope is really grow him as an individual where he has the confidence to to give his all every single weekend, which is what you're seeing this year.

18:44And to be clear on this, they do the hard work. Mine is just really light, guiding buffers on the outside to make sure that they're good. Same when they have a down weekend. They will have a down weekend. My job is to make sure they don't spiral out of control. They're here. They understand how to, again, put it in a pox. It's done. It's gone. Here's how we move forward together at the same time. And with Carlos, it's exactly the same, except he's very good at doing it. He's pissed at himself or the team on monday afterwards and so he should be by tuesday he's calling and trying to understand how do we find this performance this this and this we need to talk this out this is what i'm going to do to change myself and mine is to be a sanding board and here to effectively execute the items that simply make sense for all of us as a result of it um so it's an easy job with these two it was it was kind of hollywoodified if you want to call it that if that's even a word you know in the last he's trying to survive but you know why aside from him being a name and aside from him being the last Ferrari driver to win the Grand Prix and the success that he had the year you managed to get him.

19:41On everything that you've talked about around what you want to achieve, why was he such an important part of that? So I've spoken about culture. Culture is driven from values and behaviours and the values that both Carlos and Alex have are exemplary. They're individuals where their ego doesn't take over. Williams is far bigger than me. I am just here to hold on to the shirt and put it into a better place then hand it to someone else. With Alex and Carlos, Williams is bigger than the two of them as well. Our job between all of us is to bring Williams back into winning ways. And that absolutely is their belief system and where they're born.

20:12They will perform at their very highest level. They will give us everything that they can. And if that's a win, they'll give it to us. But it's about understanding that everything is bigger than us in the world. We're just a part of that journey. And so that was part of the reason with the two of them as well at the same time. The second is, if there's any fighting between your two drivers, you're going to slow yourself down as a team. We have to rebuild everything and I need their help to do so. and the third is they're both leaders they're young but they're both leaders they think they're older now but they're not they're still they're still young compared to me certainly um and what i need is individuals that can stand up in front of the team where 40 words can drive the team forward for a year and they can both do that formula one the thing i find the most interesting about it is that you're a team sport at everything but actually it's driven by individual results those two drivers you mentioned if they're not working together it's harder for the team do you feel now we're in an environment where drivers are more consistently behaving like they are a team whether in the past we did see a little bit more friction in cars i i would definitely say there's elements of the past where you had that friction but it wasn't that long ago where there was friction between frankly nico and lewis for that matter um i think we have to acknowledge one thing i have it easy at the moment we're not fighting for a world championship we're fighting for what was survival previously now what we're fighting for is strong results and maybe into a podium at some stage.

21:34It does get different when you're fighting for wins, but if you create the right construct beforehand, you can do that in a fair and exemplary format, which is a lot of what I learned at Mercedes as well for transparency. So I think that's one difference. So there's a little bit more friction, for example, in McLaren, not as much as in the olden days, I agree. I think the second part now is in the olden days, you could win, you'd have a car second and a half faster than anyone. That doesn't exist anymore now. We are fighting in tenths of milliseconds. So if you You give anything away and you do by fighting each other.

22:01And the extremes that I remember is data was hidden from one side of the garage, for example, or you'd hide things in what you were doing. If you're working that way, you're going to be overtaken. I remember Nico said in the 80 gram change in paint on his helmet. It was something that he did to get that extra edge. But it's continuously, and it wasn't just there. You find it in every single area of it. So with Nico, ways of working with the engineer, how late you can push your engineers working, what you can scrab out of this, how you can get things slightly more biased towards the team being better.

22:31It is into the micro details, but you need everyone doing it. You keep on saying your job's easy, like, oh, I don't have the hard part. Your job as a CEO is resource allocation in a lot of ways. When you look at the balance between performance and investment, if I gave you unlimited budget, would you be on a podium this year? No, no, for two reasons. And so first and foremost, we have a cost cap. So I'll do a theoretical question without it in a second, but we have a cost cap. One of the best things we did the sport. This was not a business when I joined 25 years ago. To the extent actually with the HRMC came in and said, someone must be making this after 18 years of not making money.

23:13They came in and said, someone must be making money out of this. You're like, nope, welcome to Formula One. We just spend money. Give us more. The best examples in the history that I lived through was Toyota had more money than anyone else didn't win. Because money doesn't translate to that fundamentally. It's about efficient spend more than anything else. And everything I've just described is normal business practice. And to give you an idea, it's not that we're geniuses, but the wind tunnel. The wind tunnel used to be completely free. You could run it as much as you wanted to fundamentally. So we did used to have a freedom where you could have multiple wind tunnels.

23:48Part of the reason why Braun was successful in 2009 is it was developed in three wind tunnels all over the world before that. It got restricted to one-to-one tunnel, but unlimited, as much as you want to run the one-to-one tunnel. Then we added a rule in that was an ATR rule, as it was called, where you restricting the amount of time that that fan can be spinning for, i.e. restricting the amount of time you can use the wind tunnel for. Our development rate went up when the rule was introduced, not down. The reason why is we actually took time to think about every test that we were doing because it was limited rather than just unlimited testing.

24:19Sound familiar? But that's exactly to your point. Even if we didn't have the cost cap, unlimited money will not gain you where you need to go. You need to actually make sure you restrict yourself down in the right way to use your resources efficiently. Where would you like to spend today where you're not spending? I think we're spending pretty much in every area I want to. It's just time. So for example, building works, they take three, four years before you can have them in the right place. The investment in our simulator that started when I joined in 2023. It's an investment of over 10 million pounds, but it's not online yet because they don't exist.

24:52We have to build it from scratch. There's not exactly a Costco where you can go in and put your trolley out and get them sorted. Same with some of the machines we have. They are very specialist machines that take 24 to 36 months. And there's no amount of money that will suddenly get you that faster. Where I want to invest in, and part of it's me as well, I've slowed it down a bit just to make sure that what we invest in is right for not today but where we're going to be in five years and 10 years as a business which is a little bit more thought into it just like on that asset pricing given the inflation of asset prices that we've seen over the last five to seven years in the sport does it matter if your numbers in the interim are not great who cares if you lose 20 million 30 million 20 million 30 million a year if i'm your holder and i'm seeing asset prices go up like they are i'm here for the sale for three billion dollars i don't give a crap if we're losing 20 million dollars a year here and there so i go back to this my investors are not here for the ev for the sale price they're here to win and so what is and not win once but win across a longer duration and period of time so that 20 million it's not it's not the 20 million that's a worry it is have we directionally gone slightly the wrong direction and we have to undo it because that will slow you down when you start winning in the future.

26:11So it's making sure that when you fire your gun, it is exactly in the right direction. And then we'll invest whatever we need to be investing on the journey. The number never even comes into it in that circumstance. It's about the right return that you're getting. And that's a different way of approaching it to what you just described. There is a way of, yep, you can bump up your EV. Then what? It's high at the moment. Will it be high in two years' time? Potentially, maybe, not sure. But if you're winning, it will remain high so it's about not just pumping that up as an asset price as you said you can get down the short term but doing the right element that gives you the five-year return and 10-year return to performance driven to what extent do you think winning will remain high in terms of ev is true anymore in a world where externalities drive so much of asset values when you look at drive to survive and what it's done to the we're really creating words like the circus if iing of formula one where Miami now is Bezos coming, DiCaprio coming, and it's an event in a way that it never was before.

27:14And that drives prices. What drives it? You spoke about history before. I never got into it. Heritage. We have heritage that still puts us top three in the sport. That's definitely a part of it without question. Then there's current success. There is no doubt about it that Mercedes and McLaren have higher values than we do. And McLaren didn't approximately three years ago. that's performance based more than anything else three years ago we they were almost four years ago in in quite significant financial trouble actually as a result of things why are they where they are today they still got great heritage but they're a winning entity and and recently just carved off a shareholding at a lovely little number that sort of gives you a value as to where they are um so you're right do we all i think the question you're asking is are all ships rising Yes, definitely.