Williams will not become a Mercedes B-team, assures their new director
Formula 1 has undergone a major upheaval at the start of the 2023 season. James Vowles has left Mercedes after 13 years with the German team to become the team principal of Williams.
The new director of the British team asserts that he will contribute to Williams’ progress in Formula 1 and will not turn it into a second Mercedes team. This new position carries a lot of responsibilities for James Vowles, who has been in charge of the team’s strategy at Mercedes for over ten years. However, he does not exclude the possibility of collaborating with his former team in the future, but he prioritizes the interests of the Grove team.
“The new Williams team director stated to Sky Sports, ‘I wouldn’t consider it to be a mini-Mercedes.'”
« This does not mean that Mercedes and ourselves will not have any collaboration in one form or another, there was collaboration before my arrival, but I have to do what is best for Williams from now on.
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Williams is independent.
The links between the Mercedes team and Williams have been strong since the beginning of the engine partnership in 2014, however the English team is completely independent and doesn’t face any pressure from the Mercedes company. Toto Wolff confirms this independence of the Williams team and believes that James Vowles is one of the best people to turn around the struggling Grove team, which had a difficult 2022 season.
“There was always speculation that Williams, due to the Mercedes engine, was a subordinate, but none of that was obviously true and we never got involved in any kind of driver situation,” assures the director of the Mercedes team to Sky Sports.
« There are no mini-Mercedes or B-team, nor any of those notions. It’s about me standing on my own two feet and succeeding with an organization around me, assures James Vowles.
