Sven Smits: Controlled chaos reigns at Williams

In the off-season, Williams management went through major changes, resulting in Jost Capito, now a former team principal, and technical director Francois Demaison leaving their posts.

James Vowles, former chief strategist at Mercedes, is the new boss, but he won’t start work until two weeks later, so he didn’t take part in today’s presentation of the new FW45 livery.

Of course, all these changes could not but affect the process of preparing for the season, but Sven Smits, the sports director of the team, called this situation “controlled chaos” and made it clear that serious problems were avoided, so everything is going according to plan.

Sven Smits: “I would call it controlled chaos. Of course we still have a week at our disposal – we have a filming day scheduled, so the car will be run in for the first time, and we will spend another filming day in Bahrain before testing begins. We use this time to check various components, engine and so on.

That is why I think we can prepare well for the work in Bahrain. The FW45 is the second car I’ve been involved in and now I look at the whole process in a very different way than last year when I joined the team a few weeks before the start of the season.

But we have a lot to do now, everyone is working at full speed, because we want to stock up on spare parts before the race in Bahrain. But it seems like it was a bit easier for us a year ago, in that we tested first in Barcelona and went to the second test in Bahrain a few weeks later.”

Williams Chief Engineer Dave Robson added that the new Williams is an evolution of last year’s FW44, although there are a number of design changes, most notably the reshaped side pontoons.

“Conceptually you could call it evolution,” he said. – The changes are clearly visible and will still be seen, but of course there have also been changes to the design in accordance with the technical regulations of 2023, and here the main focus is on the underside of the car.

The main upgrade was the side pontoon design, which was a continuation of the changes made at Silverstone last year, but we were a bit held back by the radiator layout as we didn’t want to change it completely.”

Of course Williams welcomes the arrival of James Vowles with great expectations.

“I think it’s really important for the team to be led by someone who can keep moving forward,” said Robson. “In a few weeks, when Vowles starts work, it will become clear what his plans are. I think he will fully apply the experience gained at Mercedes.

He knows what it takes to get to the top and stay there. I think he’s a very ambitious person, certainly very smart, and we look forward to the day he joins us.”

“We all understand that this path will take more than a year, and in my opinion, James wants to get started as soon as possible. He has serious long-term plans, he intends to take Williams to higher positions, and that’s good! Smiths is convinced.