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James Vowles believes Williams is currently in a position it “would have dreamed of” at the beginning of the F1 season.
Following his arrival from Mercedes in February, Vowles has transformed the team, both on and off the track.
That was underlined across the Dutch Grand Prix weekend with an astonishing performance that saw both Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant qualify in the top 10, the latter, in particular, for the first time this season.
Sargeant, however, undid all his good work by crashing out in Q3 and again in the race, and whilst Albon started from a high of fourth on the grid with Williams, the wet/mixed conditions conspired against him as he dropped to eighth at the chequered flag.
Those four points, however, have elevated Williams into a clear seventh position in the constructors’ standings, breaking away from a tie with Haas that was the picture going into the Zandvoort weekend.
After finishing last in four of the previous five seasons, Williams finds itself in a position that has even caught Vowles by surprise.
“I’m very proud of what the team has achieved,” said Vowles.
“They’ve come from several years of really being punished and not achieving a terrible amount, and their heads are lifted high.
“They’re responding to the direction of travel that we’re going into and, oddly, you can see the start of a cultural change as well, that’s happening.
“A culture doesn’t change overnight. It doesn’t change even in six months. It’s years’ worth of work. But the facts are the team is ready to change, and that’s one of the things I’m proud of them for.
“There are points we’ve left on the table but, for the most part, we’ve picked up every point we could so far.
“Where we are is a fantastic position, a position that we would have dreamed of before the season started.
“Where we go from here though, this is the start of the journey, and what I’m more excited by is the next few years rather than the last few months.”
Williams currently finds itself in a scrap with not only Haas, but also Alfa Romeo and AlphaTauri for the seventh-to-10th positions in the constructors’.
Whilst the FW45 displayed incredible performance around Zandvoort, and is expected to perform equally as well around Monza for this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix given its straight-line speed, the team has stopped development on the car as its focus is on 2024.
“The car we have, that’s it,” said Vowles. “Unlike Haas, who I think is a fierce adversary, a fierce fight, we don’t have anything more coming for the remainder of the year.
“So, we have to try and pick up the points that are going to be available to us when they’re going to be available to us.
“The focus, and not just now, but actually from a while back, has been on ’24, and actually, part of the focus on ’25 and on ’26 as well.
“At the moment, we’re in a fierce battle for this 10th, ninth, eighth, seventh. But I want the team, for them, and for me as well, to be in a fierce battle for positions above there.
“You can’t do that by continuously developing what you have at the moment. You do that by thinking forward into the future, and that will have a cost associated with it, potentially even going backward for a year, but to go forward again in the future.”
