Williams overcomes a “controlled chaos” during the winter while waiting for James Vowles’ arrival
Williams unveiled yesterday its 2023 livery at the team's factory based in Groove. After finishing in last place four times in the last five seasons, the team hopes to have a more refined FW45 in their hands, awaiting the arrival of their new director James Vowles before the pre-season tests.
The mythical English institution has once again experienced a rather tumultuous winter, notably with the departure of former director Jost Capito and François-Xavier Demaison, formerly in the position of technical director.
Sven Smeets, sports director, reflects on the preparation and development of the team during this eventful winter break.
“It’s controlled chaos, as I call it,” said Smeets. “Of course, I mean that we have next week – we have a filming day so the car will have some track time and we will have another one in Bahrain before testing – that we will use, the car will of course run and as Dave [Robson, Vehicle Performance Chief] mentioned, we have conducted various tests on the components, the engine, and all of that.”
So, I think we will be very well prepared for Bahrain and yes, I mean, it’s my second car built now, so I looked at it completely differently from my arrival last year a few weeks ago.
But we are just very busy. Everyone is fully dedicated, we want to have the race quantities [of parts] of course in Bahrain and it seemed a bit easier last year with the test in Barcelona, then a few weeks, then the test in Bahrain.
“The evolution” while waiting for the revolution?
Dave Robson focused on the changes to the FW45 compared to its predecessor. The most noticeable change, visually, will be in the sidepods.
« It is philosophically an evolution; obviously, you will see, but of course the regulatory changes around the new floor dominate a part of it. »
“I think the other thing you will find most obvious is an update to the sidepod package, which is an evolution of what we did for the Silverstone upgrade package [2022], but we were a bit restricted then by the radiator layout and didn’t want to completely change that,” he said.
James Vowles, the man the team has been waiting for.
The former strategy chief of Mercedes, James Vowles, will start his position as team director at Williams on February 20. This is a new challenge that the team is eager to begin, according to Robson.
“I think it is very important for the team to have someone who finishes this journey now and gets us moving forward again,” said Robson.
And we all knew that this wouldn’t be just a one-year journey, so I think James is very eager to get started, and he will be very determined to advance Williams in the long run. “It’s very exciting,” Smeets added.
When he [Vowles] arrives in a few weeks, we will discover what he has planned. I think what he brings is obviously a wealth of experience from Mercedes and its incarnations before that.
Before concluding: « He knows what it takes to be at the top and stay at the top. Personally, I think he is very ambitious, he is clearly very intelligent, so we are excited to have him participate and lead us for the rest of the journey.
