Broken bones, Hamilton’s friendship and goosebumps at Williams – Getting to know the real James Vowles

We know you also like to race cars from time to time… Who do you think would win a race out of all the F1 team bosses?

I encourage us to try this and see where we get to! We can’t ignore the fact that Toto [Wolff] was a professional driver. It depends on the cars as well. [But] he was good in GT cars, still is today, he and I messed around, and with Lewis as well in Austin [a few years ago]. It was fun – close, but fun, between the three of us. So, Toto will be up there. Christian [Horner], again, he got to F3000, a fast, competitive driver, so I think he’d be good. Zak [Brown], I’ve never raced against him, but he’s got some elements to him. I think that’s going to be your semi top tier, then Oliver Oakes, we can’t forget he was karting World Champion, and he’s right in there.

So, what I’d really like… I’m avoiding the question, but I’ll get to the question – there’s actually a good breadth across the grid now of individuals that are both running teams but also have huge potential. I think it would depend on what car it is and what track it is as to who would win out of all of those.

EXCLUSIVE: James Vowles on his own racing career, trying out Williams’s iconic F1 cars and a potential series for team bosses

We could try and add another round to the calendar just for team bosses…

I welcome it, I think we should give it a go!

What’s your favourite film and TV show of all time?

TV show, it’s going to show my age, the original MacGyver. I just thought that was brilliant, a man with a pen knife pretty much could take down an entire army – but he did it with science, and I really quite enjoyed that. The A-Team was in there as well, that was my youth. Film? They’re classics. The Rock with Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery is brilliant, I really enjoy that film. A long time ago, I know. There’s another film no one has ever heard of called Sneakers, which I quite like, which is about individuals breaking into a bank. So, there you go – a couple of those!