Vowles: Williams is categorically against the 11th team

The head of Willams F1, James Vowles, outlined his position on the arrival of the Andretti team in Formula 1…

James Vowles: “Williams is against adding an eleventh team. I am categorically against it. And I will explain my position.

I am responsible for 900 employees of my company. If you look at the Companies House data you will see that we are losing money. Seriously unprofitable. The losses are in the tens of millions. The reason is that we invest in this sport to get better. We believe in where the sport is going, we believe in the direction of its development.

It must be clear that we are not the only ones who lack financial stability. This applies to approximately half of the teams. And I believe adding an eleventh team only makes sense if the tenth team is stable.

We are fortunate that our owners really believe in what we do and invest in it. But for sports in general, it is important to ensure stability and make thoughtful decisions.

Everyone says everything is fine now – in some ways it is, but when hundreds of millions are invested in sports, we are all very careful about possible risks. We made it clear from the start that we would like to attract new partners, but that the pie must grow and not shrink.

To be clear, I am not against Andretti or GM, on the contrary. I applaud the GM and hope to build a relationship with them if things don’t work out. This is an incredible company that, in my opinion, will make the sport better. It’s not that we’re against new people coming into the sport, but we’re very careful about protecting the sport we have now.”