James on the “quite significant” changes made at Grove

It has been pretty clear that whilst Williams Racing has one eye on the here and now, the other is firmly set on getting the team prepared for the major regulation shake-up coming in 2026.

James Vowles has been resolute on this stance since he first arrived at the team in February 2023, and on Monday his line-up to take us into this new era was confirmed.

During the latest episode of The Vowles Verdict, presented by Kraken, our Team Principal was quizzed on what he believed were some of the strengths and weaknesses so far in 2024, and it was clear that this preparation for the future was high up on his list of positives.

James began by saying: “The strengths are that we have done huge technology changes here at Grove.

“They are quite significant and they’re not small items. They’re not items that we’ll be done with in a month or two, they are multi-year transformations.

“Because simply operating as we were before would produce a little bit more performance, but not enough to put us back into the capability of being at the front of the grid, and that’s what our goal is.

“I’ve said this time and time again, it could even be that we drop backwards a little bit in ‘24, but the sacrifice will be worthwhile for that long-term vision of ‘26.

When the focus switched to our weaknesses, James was clear that the weight of our FW46 has certainly held us back on track.

“We produced a car that has very different technology, very different aero philosophy, very different setup philosophy, but the car was heavy,” Vowles commented.

“We’ve spoken about this openly, that weight is just simple performance. It translates every time.

“Every time in my career, we’ve put 10 kilos of mass or fuel in the car, it’s about three-tenths slower, that’s pretty much been the number for many years, and it’s the same this year.

“We’ve been carrying that around, and we’re still carrying around a good chunk of it today.”

However, despite looking ahead to future seasons, progress has still been made on the FW46 ahead of the final 10 rounds of 2024.

“The good news is once we come back from that [Summer Shutdown] into Zandvoort, Monza and Baku, you’ll see that now fall away and that’s the important part that we’ve been aiming for during this part of the season. “

To discover more about what was discussed on the latest episode of The Vowles Verdict, tune in below, or catch up with our previous editions from throughout the season.