Season results: Williams Racing – all Formula 1 news 2023

The first season under the leadership of James Vowles, who switched from Mercedes to Williams, ended with the best result in the past five years.

After purchasing the rights from the Williams family, Williams’ new owners from the American fund Dorilton Capital decided to return the team to its former glory. This is a long process and may not lead to the goal, because the base of the team has not been updated for ten years, the budget is limited and the rivals do not stand still, but still the season turned out to be relatively successful. although success in Formula 1 is always balanced against the failures of rivals who performed worse.

Dorilton Capital invited former Mercedes strategist James Vowles to the position of team leader – he replaced Jost Capito and then Pat Fry as technical director, signed several sponsorship contracts and finished the season with a profit.

Vowles assessed the situation and then stated frankly that Williams does not have many technologies actively used by other teams. He spent over twenty years at Brackley, working with BAR, Honda, Brawn GP and Mercedes, gaining fantastic experience, but Mercedes and Williams are on opposite poles.

Everything at Mercedes was new and modern, bought, built and developed before budget constraints, but at Williams nothing was updated at all for years, the team simply made money from sponsors and drivers. And the staff left on every occasion.

This year the situation has changed, the team received money comparable to the budget of its biggest rivals, Vowles came – and the motivation of the employees has changed. There is hope, because Williams has once again become a good and promising place to work.

Alex Albon played a decisive role in the sporting success. The former member of the Red Bull youth program, written off by Helmut Marko, turned out to be surprisingly fast and stable. Great racer. This year he brought the team 27 points, all but one of them earned by his American teammate Logan Sargent.

Sargent, on the other hand, had a very poor season and made $4 million worth of cars. The most expensive for Williams was the Dutch Grand Prix – in one weekend Sargent crashed the car twice in Zandvoort for a total of $1.4 million. However, his contract was extended. Of course, the status of being the only American racer with three American stages on the calendar played a role, as did his sponsors.

Williams’ success this year can be called coincidental, on the margin of error – the team remains far behind, after 22 Grands Prix only three points ahead of AlphaTauri, but after last place in the Constructors’ Championship a year ago, this is an undisputed success. I would like to believe that Williams will continue to have a successful future.