James Vowles has signed a new long-term contract as he continues on as Team Principal at Williams, meaning that he will remain at the head of the squad as they push to return to championship-winning glory.
Vowles joined the team ahead of the 2023 season from Mercedes, where he had acted as Motorsport Strategy Director for four years. He previously held key engineering and strategy roles at Mercedes, Brawn GP, Honda and BAR across 21 years in the sport.
Since then the Briton – who is only Williams’ third Team Principal in their 48-year history – has been focused on transforming the outfit as they look to make their way back to the front of the grid, following on from Dorilton Capital’s purchase of the team in 2020.
So far in 2025, Williams have enjoyed their strongest start to a season since 2016, with Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz regularly clinching points to give the Grove-based squad a current position of fifth in the Teams’ Championship.
Their points tally of 55 is more than the total points scored by the team across the previous three seasons combined.
“I am delighted to sign a new contract with Atlassian Williams Racing, which has felt like home from the moment I walked through the door,” said Vowles, whose exact length of contract extension hasn’t been revealed.
“This iconic team has already given me some incredible memories and we are all united in our ambition to build on our legacy and win World Championships again.
“Over the past two years we have focused on fixing the foundations, and now have a platform to go for glory in the years to come.”
Matthew Savage, Chairman of Williams and Dorilton Capital, added: “We are thrilled that James has signed a new contract with Atlassian Williams Racing and committed his future to completing the mission that we are on together.
“He has brought experience, energy and strategic leadership to the task of restoring Williams to the top step of the podium. We aren’t there yet but you can sense the momentum we are building at Grove and are excited about what lies ahead.”
Lawrence Barretto, F1 Correspondent & Presenter, says…
Williams owners Dorilton Capital put a lot of trust in James Vowles when they appointed him as Team Principal (he had significant experience as part of the leadership team at Mercedes but no team principal experience) and the news they have extended his deal proves they believe he has rewarded that faith.
Since joining in January 2023, Vowles had maintained that transforming Williams’ fortunes from backmarkers to fighting at the sharp end is a long-term project – and that there would likely be short-term pain as they rebuild and revitalise every part of the operation. When he talks about targets, he refers to 2028 and 2029 before he anticipates a big step up, so significant are the upgrades he and the owners think are needed to transform the team.
So far, it’s all going rather well. Vowles pulled off a coup by signing Carlos Sainz, fending off competition from Audi and Alpine – and the impact has been near-instant. Together with Alex Albon, they have formed a formidable line-up who are working seamlessly together and driving the team forward.
And on track, after under-promising, the team is over-delivering – they currently sit a superb fifth, having been 10th in the season before Vowles took over. And things are looking encouraging for next year too.
They switched all development focus to 2026, when sweeping new rules are introduced, months ago – and will simultaneously benefit from more wind tunnel and CFD (or computational fluid dynamics simulation) running time than their immediate rivals in the first half of this year because of their lowly finish in the standings last year.
Vowles’ plan appears to be working and the first building blocks are in place, so it’s no surprise that Dorilton have moved to lock him down for the foreseeable future.
