EXCLUSIVE: How to be an F1 team principal

It is not unusual for people to harbour bold dreams and ambitions in life. But becoming an F1 team principal was not something James Vowles always had in his sights.

Vowles made his foray into F1 with British American Racing in 2001, after achieving a master’s degree in Motorsport Engineering and Management. The Briton rose through the ranks, first as an engineer, before later being promoted to a race strategist.

Having played an instrumental role in Jenson Button and Brawn GP’s fairytale title triumphs in 2009, Vowles remained at the Brackley-based outfit during their transformation into Mercedes.

Vowles would play his part in 112 Mercedes victories, seven drivers’ world championships, and an unprecedented eight consecutive constructors’ titles from 2014 until the end of 2021.

But when the opportunity came to take over as the new team principal at Williams in 2023, Vowles couldn’t say no.

He has completed a huge coup by signing outgoing Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, winning a battle that included the might of Audi.

Vowles was asked by Crash.net in Williams’ hospitality unit in a baking Hungaroring paddock if becoming team principal was always his aim. He replied: “I think the reality behind it is no.

“Wind all the way back, I was really a young kid when I first joined F1. I think I was 21 or 22, and my thoughts at the time were ‘can I make it in this game?’ So, there was nothing about aspirations of going further.

“It’s where are we and what does this look like? Then you start getting bedded in and you find your place and what you can do. Mine was all over the company really.

“But you’re not thinking at the time, ‘that’s the job I want up there’. Because it would be such a far-reaching dream that it would be wrong, I think. There’s a difference between aspiration and lunacy.”

Learning from the best 

As Vowles explained, it took a gentle nudge from Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff for him to start seriously considering the idea of becoming a team boss.

“It was really towards the 2013, 2014 season and Toto was a large part of it,” Vowles said. “He and I worked very closely on certain things.

“Strategy isn’t just what we do with the car on weekends. It became what do we do with the company; how do we invest across multiple years; how do we do the right PU strategy? He and I linked up on it and we found that the combination of the two of us was quite a potent success.

“He was actually the one that pushed me and said, ‘this is the right direction for you, but you need to fulfil these requirements.’ It was sort of around that time that it became a dream.”

Vowles learnt a huge amount from Wolff and credits the Austrian’s influence on his rise to the highest echelons of senior F1 management.

“He is up and down the pitlane one of the best people in terms of understanding the business model,” Vowles explained. “He understood it before everyone else and made Mercedes into a very significant commercial success. And I was able to learn quite a bit of that from him.

“His communication style and mine is actually very similar, but it’s a coincidence. It’s open and there’s transparency, a mild amount of humour thrown in there to make things better - his is more Germanic,” Vowels chuckled. “I certainly learnt enough from him.

“It has to be clear; it wasn’t a ‘I’m going after your job’, it was an aspirational dream to get there. I’m a firm believer, even now I have a dream of what I want to achieve going forward.

“You’ve got to have things that continually stretch you, so that you’re learning all the time and you are never resting on your laurels. There’s no individual in the world who is at the end of their journey, and I don’t want to be either. Being here is a dream come true, but not the end of the journey.

“I just treat it as the beginning of the journey. And it wasn’t something that I started in the sport thinking I could achieve. That came through a lot of hard work and support from those around me.”

Naturally, this revelation from Vowles fuelled a follow-up question – what is the next part of the dream?

“Becoming a team principal is a threshold. Becoming a team principal for one of the most successful teams in the pitlane was the second dream. Becoming a team principal where you get your first podium, first win, first championship, those are the dreams, and it doesn’t stop there,” Vowles responded.

“I’m someone that is never satisfied. There’s more I want. But being here is just really the first step of the journey.”

Getting the best out of your staff

Vowles is a brilliant communicator. Every answer is considered and delivered with calm assurance. After spending just 15 minutes with him it is easy to see why he is so well-liked and capable of motivating and inspiring those around him.

“I think it’s blunt honesty,” Vowles replied when asked what he feels his biggest strength is as a team principal. “It’s two things; it’s honesty but it’s the communication that comes with it as well.

“I think what I’m fairly good at is taking a lot of what is complex information and instilling it into something useful and communicating it. That’s what I’m good at.

“The second thing is, as we have this conversation, that’s me. There’s no facade, there’s nothing hidden. I will be as open and forthright as I can be because it creates the right environment.”

Vowles places huge emphasis on the importance of creating an environment that gets the most out of its workforce.

“I lead by example, so I want others to take inspiration from how I am,” he added. “That is a coaching style, trust who you get, find people that really can succeed.

“I’m not the most intelligent person in the room. I find others that I’m sure will take over from me in many years to come. That’s okay. But surround yourself with peers who are continually pushing you day by day.

“Honesty and openness. So yes, people-person, but here is the real secret source behind it. It doesn’t matter if you use words that make it look like you care. You really have to care about the individual and if you do, things work. If you pretend to, it falls apart.

“I really do care about the people who are in this team. Why are they doing this? Why are they getting up at seven in the morning and in some cases travelling from London to Grove. What drives them? And what can I do to create an environment where that’s where they want to be not in six months, but in 10 years.”

Changing Williams’ philosophy

Vowles has instilled a fresh philosophy at Williams over the last 18 months. The approach is all about focusing on the medium-to-long-term with the ultimate aim of restoring this famous F1 team to their former glory days of the 1980s and 1990s.

“First and foremost, it’s the injection of the gap of where we need to be. It’s just an open and transparent ‘here’s where we are, here’s where we need to be,’” he explained.

“The point behind that is that we’re not on the right pathway to achieving that in any sensible timeframe, because everyone else is developing and moving forward.

“It’s the understanding that we have to progress, we have to change and by the way even though we’ve just moved forward and it feels really uncomfortable, move forward twice the amount tomorrow, and keep doing that.

“Even when we are successful, we keep doing it. Because that’s the real secret behind all of this. I think what I’ve brought to that is the gap, the injection of some excellence with other people joining the organisation that have followed me here. And then openness and communication, because what we have is a series of individuals who are very good at what they do.

“But they did it by themselves. A team of individuals who would go above and beyond to a level that I couldn’t believe would be possible in modern-day environments, but they would.

“That’s sustainable for a very short period and not a long-term aspiration. What I’ve brought is where we are, where we need to get to, and a sensible timeframe and investment behind which we can do it.”

Part of this has led to encouraging taking more “uncomfortable” risks with technology changes at Grove. This has included departments such as aero and chassis design, as well as composite structures.

Key to this is the implementation of a ‘no-blame’ culture.

“The team had faith that I had their back should it fail, and we’ll win together, and we’ll lose together. That changes everything,” Vowles said.

“I grew up in an environment where there was so much blame around you that it was awful, it really was terrible. You just get to a certain point where you go ‘enough is enough’.

“If we want to move forward, we are going to have to accept that we are going to make mistakes and learn to use that.”

What Williams are missing

According to Vowles, “time” is the big missing piece Williams need to complete their F1 revival.

Since arriving, Vowles has openly acknowledged how far behind some of Williams’ infrastructure is compared to F1’s leading outfits. He admitted “simulation” was a fundamental early priority that needed addressing when he stepped through the door, and conceded facilities in certain areas are 20 years out of change.

A push in changing F1’s capital expenditure limits to free up room for much-needed investment for Williams was a big early win for Vowles, and he has recently pulled off a major coup in persuading outgoing Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz to commit to the project.

But Vowles is under no illusions. He knows Williams are playing the long game in their quest to return to the front.

“No one person, and that includes me, will ever turn a team from what it was into what it is,” he said.

“I’ll bring in five key individuals I trust with my life, and they’ll bring in five key individuals they trust with their life. Like all the lieutenants, that’s the sort of terminology I like using.

“But the point behind that is whatever thoughts you have; you multiply five times across the business and the same thing goes down through the business. All my job is to do is to completely cascade it throughout the entire organisation.

“So, the final piece [of the jigsaw] is when I know I’ve got that cascade throughout the organisation such that we’re all pointing the right way. You need to make sure you’ve chosen the right pathway.

“There’s about a thousand ways you can design a car, you’ve just got to make sure you get it into the right general direction. That’s not one person’s individual decision, that’s the group together.

“That’s the secret behind it all. It’s pointing the right way and having everyone wanting to move that way.”

Williams are targeting the upcoming 2026 rules change as a golden opportunity. Vowles believes Williams have a “very strong chance” of moving forward, revealing “many people” in the organisation have already fully switched focus onto the new regulations. 

“That doesn’t mean we won't bring performance to the car in the next two years, we will do, but the big ones will come for 26, 27 and 28,” he explained. 

“That's a long way out and in any other organisation it's uncomfortable feeling that far out. But it's the right pathway. If I asked you to fix this by next month, you’ll shortcut it and we’ll have the same mess we had before.”