F1 Explains: James Vowles on the start of the season - live in Melbourne

10:48James Vowles:James, it's interesting, isn't it? Because maybe I'm wrong. I feel like we talk more about mid-season development in this era of Formula One than we used to say going back a decade? Because McLaren, who we mentioned there, a good example of that, who turned up in 2023 in Bahrain for what was then the first race of the season in an awful position, turning up, doing sort of saying, look, we're not where we want to be. They won the Constructors' Championship the year after that. Your point there that we may find ourselves in a very different position in Abu Dhabi. How much do you think that may well be the case, that it looks different by the end of this season?

11:21Christian Hewgill:Yeah, it'll be enormous. I mean, as I said, right now, hard to say what's going up and down the grid, but I'm happy with what we're doing in the background. There's quite a bit of performance. And when the gaps are still reasonably small in the grand scheme of things, it can turn it on its head in just a few months' time. And that's a good thing. That's what you want from the regulations. It shouldn't be predictable in that way. Absolutely. Sophie, have you enjoyed this experience?

11:43James Vowles:I have very much, yes.

11:44Christian Hewgill:I'm very glad about that. I'll message Zach and let him know.

11:50James Vowles:Sophie, thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, give her a massive round of applause. Sophie!

12:07James Vowles:This is F1 Explains Live, and we are on the main stage at the Australian Grand Prix with the Williams team principal, James Valls. James, we know the engines have changed significantly this year. That is one different thing and different part of these rule changes coming into this season. James, you are a customer team. You buy your engines from an engine partner, in this case Mercedes. How different is it for the teams who are buying engines? Haas are the same as you guys who get engines in from Ferrari, for example. What do you guys have to do differently coming into a new regulation set when the engines are different compared to a team like Mercedes who are making their engines sort of on site?

12:47Christian Hewgill:I mean, we're fortunate with the relationship with Mercedes. They're a good... I mean, I've been a part of Mercedes for a long, long time. You've got a few ins there. Yeah, a few ins, which helps you. But what you have to accept and understand is that the works team will get priority over how even you're attaching the engine to the back of the gearbox. And elements change, and did change all the way through very, very quickly. There's a priority of over-understanding how to get the most out of the package and squeeze everything that you can from it. But you'll find that, especially in this regulation year, that'll start to reduce down quite quickly because that knowledge base is important.

13:24Christian Hewgill:And it's probably part of the reason why you're seeing the works teams up front a little bit more than the customer teams at the moment. But it doesn't take us long to learn how to use all of it and come back flying at the end of the season.

13:34James Vowles:We often hear in Formula One about the difference between the size of the teams. Are rule changes like this a bigger challenge for teams like Williams? you're open in saying you don't have the resources of a team like Mercedes, Ferrari. Does that make rule changes a bigger challenge for teams like yourself?

13:53Christian Hewgill:Yeah, there's no doubt about it. I mean, this in the time I've been in the sport is the biggest regulation change I can remember. We've changed everything on the chassis, complete new regulations, not even a bolt carried over, complete new power units with a very different way of operating it and working it. And we changed the ECUs at the same time as well, which was an upgrade, but it's been a little bit difficult. you put all, just one of those, just the chassis chains would be enough to normally overload a company. Change all three, and we're still really in a situation where you get a little bit more exposed than I would like to be.

14:26Christian Hewgill:And that's sort of why you've seen a little bit the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari and Red Bull pull forward from the others. I'm happy about it in a really weird way because it starts to expose everything we've got to fix. And what we've been doing over the last month is not worrying about what's happened, but it's making some significant changes to fix it, to make sure that we also can be in that position in the future. I'm not too worried about the ongoing next year, the year afterwards. I want to make sure that as we go into big regulation changes, we have the support structure we need.

14:54James Vowles:James, that's really interesting. And we have got another listener to meet you on stage now. So ladies and gentlemen, please give a massive welcome to Victoria.

15:08James Vowles:Victoria, welcome to F1 Explains. Thank you. Whereabouts are you from? I'm from Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. From the USA. Go blue, whoever that was. Your first Australian Grand Prix? It is, yes. How are you finding it? It's fabulous. And thank you for the weather. Thank you to the weather gods that gave us this and not last year's weather.

15:28Christian Hewgill:Yeah, I agree on that one.

15:30James Vowles:We already have enough chaos coming with the new regulations. We didn't need all the rain. We didn't need weather changing.

15:36Christian Hewgill:There's something to know, and hopefully everyone will support me on this. The one thing to know about Melbourne, though, is you can have this weather today, and tomorrow it can be four degrees and raining. It is just Melbourne is the only place I've seen where it changes four times in a week. I think we had that over the last race weekend last year.

15:49James Vowles:We had extreme heat. We had rain. Yeah, we really did last year. Victoria, now bear in mind how this went a little earlier in the show. I'm going to ask you the same question, and how you choose to answer it is up to you. Who are your favorite drivers? Who is your favorite team?

16:04Christian Hewgill:Well, Williams, of course.

16:06James Vowles:There we go.

16:06Christian Hewgill:That's what I want to say.

16:08James Vowles:Thank you very much. How long have you been following the sport for? This is my second season, actually. I fell down a very deep rabbit hole last year. And all of a sudden, before you know it, you're on stage doing a podcast with a team principal. All because we ran into each other at Abu Dhabi. Would you like to explain a bit of background? Yeah, go on, explain this story. Christian was running about on the track. I was doing a track run one evening. And I yelled out to him while he was running around, and he heard me, and that was about it. And that was it, yeah. Victoria shouted at me while I was doing a track run.

16:40James Vowles:Fantastic. The rest, as they say, is history. Victoria, the floor is yours to speak to James Valls. What question would you like to ask him? Fantastic. Well, we've been doing a lot of looking forward this year with the regulations, but I'd like to take a little bit of a look back and ask, since you came to the team, you've obviously been talking about bringing Williams back to winning races and championships. And so I wanted to know what's the most impactful changes that you've made since coming to Williams, and what have you learned about leadership in that process?

17:10Christian Hewgill:Really good question. So probably the most impactful was we had a number of really good individuals, but they weren't talking to each other. They were so focused on my job is to do this to the best of my ability, my sphere that I can control. And actually that's not how you run successful companies. We're about 1 ,000 people. Once you go over above 200, you can't work that way anymore. And everything is cross-functional. Everything that you're doing has an impact on everyone left and right of you. And I don't just mean within design. So, for example, there are really good examples of aerodynamics.

17:43Christian Hewgill:We're just focused on how do I make this car aerodynamically better with no consideration for the impact it had on design, the impact it had on build at the same time. And one of the most impactful changes is that you literally pick the very best from each of them, bring them together in a room, and the car performance is your responsibility. It's not the responsibility of aero. It's not responsibility of economics or design or operations. It's all of you in this room. And suddenly you just get a flow of ideas that didn't exist before. And you can see that on how the car is changing. The car fundamentally has a lot more embedded nature where it works across the organization and business.

18:19Christian Hewgill:That was probably the most impactful. What was the second bit of it?

18:22James Vowles:What have you learned about leadership through that process?

18:25Christian Hewgill:The biggest thing probably is if you have a belief of something that you should do, There's no point sitting on it, waiting for more information for the next month or two months. Act on what you know is right and do it quickly and succinctly.

18:39James Vowles:Fantastic. When is your leadership book coming out?

18:43Christian Hewgill:As you know, apart from Christmas Day, I don't have any other time available to me. It's not for our book. Keep working for the time being. Many years later, maybe. We'll see.

18:52James Vowles:Well, I look forward to that.

18:54Christian Hewgill:Thank you very much. Thank you for coming on.

18:56James Vowles:Victoria, we really appreciate you coming on. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big thank you very much to Victoria. Thank you again. Victoria, great question. We have got around about five minutes left with you, James, so we're going to bring on our final listener straight away. Australian Grand Prix, please go wild for Karen.

19:18James Vowles:Karen, welcome. Whereabouts in the world are you from? From Coromandel, New Zealand. Wow, fantastic. Hi, Kiwis. And have you been to the Australian Grand Prix before, Karen? I have. This is my second year. As good as last time? Better. I'm here with James. There you go. Well done. Thank you so much. Great point. Great point. And I think I know the answer to this anyway. Favourite team? Favourite drivers? My favourite team is Williams, of course.

19:42Christian Hewgill:Thank you.

19:43James Vowles:And you were the only person that would make me miss Supercars qualifying that's happening right now. Wow.

19:48Christian Hewgill:I really am on it. Thank you for that.

19:50James Vowles:But driver, of course, it has to be Liam.

19:52Christian Hewgill:Of course. Makes sense.

19:54James Vowles:And we can forgive that, can't we? I'm very happy with that. Absolutely. Karen, you've got the floor. It is yours. asks James Vowles a question. Okay, can you explain what the window is? We hear a lot about cars being in the right window, or more rightly, not in the right window. What exactly is that?

20:12Christian Hewgill:Really good question. So often when we're talking about window, it will mean one of two things, either the tyres fundamentally being in the right temperature range, or the car balance being in the right range effectively. And the reason why we use window is you can normally bookend it one side or the other with extremes. So it's where you are in that balance. And the reason why we use the word window is it's a very easy way for a driver to communicate, to simply indicate we're nowhere where we need to be. And drivers are fantastic, but also funny beings. Everything they do is extremes. So they'll say, I have zero grip.

20:49Christian Hewgill:And you sort of go, well, if you had zero grip, I assure you, you're going to fall off the track straight away. There's not zero grip. And that's why we start to use these window connotations in order for them to understand whether we're too cold, too hot in the case of tyre temperatures, too much understeer, too much oversteer, and what speeds and corners. So that's what the window is. Thank you. You're more than welcome.

21:09James Vowles:It's questions like that why I love doing this podcast, because we do come out with some words in the world of Formula 1. You're right. I never thought about it. Yes, if you're new to F1, it's like when people say, why do you say box when you pit? And the other one is like, pace in the car. Well, surely everybody's got pace in the car. It's a Formula 1 car. They're famously quite quick. and if you are new to the sport, some of these words sometimes just mean nothing to people. So I love questions like that. Karen, just finally, how excited are you for this Formula 1 season? A new era. We've got new teams.

21:39James Vowles:We've got new engines. Are you excited as a fan? Oh, so excited. More excited than ever because we've got no idea what's going to happen.

21:46Christian Hewgill:Well said. Couldn't have said it better.

21:48James Vowles:Karen, really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much for coming on to Ask James a Question. Ladies and gentlemen, give her a round of applause. It's Karen. Thank you.

21:54Christian Hewgill:Thanks, James. Thank you so much.

21:56James Vowles:James, before we let you go, I have some quick-fire questions from listeners who have emailed f1explains at f1.com. Megan asks, James, have you got a new picture of Alex and Carlos for your desk this year? This is a bit of F1 Explains history, James. Can you explain that context and then, of course, answer Megan's question?

22:15Christian Hewgill:Yeah, so the context behind it is that I do not have any pictures of my own family. The only picture I have is Alex and Carlos. When the first time they shared travel to the UK together, they took a picture, got it printed, put on my desk to remind them effectively that they're a part of my life. I think that was the... They also changed it a little bit later to two huge, almost dictator-like portraits behind my desk. So I always knew they were there. I have nothing to do with this. It just appears. Now, that picture was there in Suzuka when we had the moment with Alex coming into my bathroom.

22:51Christian Hewgill:That's a whole other story. We'll come to that later. Different world. Look it up.

22:54James Vowles:I think many will know what we're talking about. We haven't got time, but yeah.

22:57Christian Hewgill:And it was definitely there, but it got broken at some point in transport and got changed into a picture of Frank. Now, this weekend, there's nothing on my desk, and this is typically when it's going to appear, so I'll let you know when it changes across these next few races.

23:14James Vowles:We wait with bated breath to see what appears. Ali asks, what are the top qualities you look for in selecting junior drivers?

23:22Christian Hewgill:So there's two things. It's just nature of the fact that you're looking for someone that's competitive, but you're not necessarily looking for someone that's just winning every race. What you're looking for is how they perform under pressure. And that can take away different elements. You can do that in an interview. You don't have to see them in a cart particularly. You ask them when things went well, when they didn't go well, and what you're doing. It sounds like HRE questions, but there's a reason why those questions are asked. But you can see it a lot in their results. What you look for is when there's something that's happened.

23:49Christian Hewgill:It could be there's been an engine failure or otherwise. How did they come back as a result of that? How did they attack through the field when they were at the back of it? How did they push forward? And you're looking for that performance under pressure. Because the pressure that's on their shoulders once they're here is enormous. And you're looking for some base elements of that already when they're six, eight years old.

24:07James Vowles:And in 30 seconds, because we've got one minute, this is from Garth. if you could give Alex Albon or Carlos Sainz any other role within your team, what would they be?

24:19Christian Hewgill:With Carlos, as much as he doesn't want to admit it, I would give him my job. He is absolutely fantastic. He's very good at leading teams.

24:27James Vowles:Genuinely, we have seen drivers become team principals in the past. Alan Prost or Jackie Stewart. Do you think he could be a team principal?

24:33Christian Hewgill:I think he has all the potential for it, absolutely. There's a little bit of help we need to provide him, but he's got ability to. So with Alex, actually, I think he'll do incredibly well with our Junior Academy. He's got such a way of helping explain how you wake your way through. And he's done the same with Carlos. He's done the same with the teams around him. He's just brilliant and will give every minute of his day to it.

24:52James Vowles:I feel like if in 20 years' time some of you guys are in the crowd in the future wearing Team Carlos signs caps, we will be able to trace it back to this podcast appearance. James, listen, so many Williams fans in the crowd. Right, guys?

25:06James Vowles:You are such a popular team in Formula One. I know everybody is wishing you the best for the 2026 season. And we thank you so much for coming on F1 Explained.

25:14Christian Hewgill:Thank you. Thank you, everyone out there. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, go wild for James Vowles.

25:27James Vowles:Well, that was absolutely brilliant. What a crowd in Melbourne as well. So many people came to see us. If you were one of those in the crowd watching, thank you so much. And of course, a huge thank you to James Valdes and Williams for getting involved with the show. And how can we forget to our listeners, Victoria, Sophie and Karen. Guys, you were brilliant. Thank you. And as we said earlier, there will be more F1 Explains live shows across the course of the season. Keep listening and we will tell you where to find us. I also just wanted to say a massive thank you to the loads of you who have been sending in questions to F1explains at F1.com.

26:02James Vowles:Thank you so much. Keep sending those in because we'll be answering them all the way through to December. December. Scary that, isn't it, Producer Jamie? So, yeah, keep sending those in. F1explains at F1.com. You can also just say hello and let us know what you think of the show. That's what Brian did. Brian said, Hi, I'm Brian from Holly Ridge, North Carolina. I love the podcast. I only found it last year and I appreciate the information. It's really helped me fill in some gaps in my knowledge. Thank you for helping everyone get more out of F1. It's beyond a sport. It's a science and so much more.

26:32James Vowles:So thank you for helping make it more accessible. Brian, you can write the episode descriptions for the show if you like. You sell it very well. Thank you very much, Brian. Thank you, Brian, in the words of Charles Leclerc. Kath says, just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed the podcast over the last year. I've learned heaps about how Formula One works. There's some fascinating behind-the-scenes stuff, and getting to know the people involved has been great. We so appreciate your messages. Thank you, guys. Keep them coming. F1 Explained at F1.com. Next week on the show, F1 TV commentator Alex Jakes joins us from China, and we're going to unpack everything that needs explaining from the first race of the season and of course our first race of this new rule set, this new era.

27:10James Vowles:So anything you're unclear on, send us a question and we'll get to the bottom of it with Alex Jakes next week. Until then, enjoy the Australian Grand Prix. Tom will be here on Monday with F1 Nation to debrief it all and the first Beyond the Grid of the new season as well, our other official Formula 1 podcast. that is available right now with Carlos Sainz what a guest hey we're on William's theme for the start of the official F1 podcast season so Carlos Sainz is on Beyond the Grid producer Jamie was there when it was being recorded Jamie how was it? it was a smooth operation lovely thank you Jamie I enjoyed that so yeah Tom's here on Monday with F1 Nation Carlos is on Beyond the Grid and I will speak to you next Friday until then from Australia bye for now

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