James Vowles expects 2025 to be a difficult year for Williams – the season is to be deliberately ‘sacrificed’ in order to make a big leap in 2026
“It’s not that we’ll move forward, but we’ll fall back a bit,” James Vowles announces in anticipation of the 2025 Formula One season. The Williams team principal expects to slip down the pecking order somewhat next year.
“The message that Alex [Albon] and Carlos [Sainz] both know is that 2025 will be a fight,” he emphasizes, explaining, ”We will make a compromise for 2025. That doesn’t mean we’ll be tenth [in the World Cup], but it will be a tough year.”
Williams will deliberately take a step backwards in 2025 in order to focus fully on the new regulations from 2026. “Everything is about 2026,” Vowles announces in the podcast Beyond The Grid and makes it clear: “2025 will be sacrificed.”
To bring the team back to the top of Formula One, major changes are needed. Vowles explains: “It’s not about a small tweak that improves aerodynamics. It’s about rethinking the technologies we use to develop the car, about evolving the organization.”
“We are trying to make leaps forward – not steps forward, not small advances, not minimal or marginal advances, but leaps in technology and in what we do,” the team principal describes his approach.
Vowles: “We will trip ourselves up”
And they want to “get it right,” he emphasizes, explaining: “We have the investment and we have the time.” Because Grove is where the foundation for a successful future is to be laid in the coming years. 2025 could therefore be described as “collateral damage.”
“The realistic timetable that I have given everyone is that we should be able to win races in 2027 or 2028, roughly on that scale. It’s hard to pin down exactly because I want to have the infrastructure in place first. But that’s the timetable we’re aiming for,” explains Vowles.
“And we’ll trip ourselves up in the process. And I’m fine with that, because we can’t unlearn what we’ve learned,” says the team principal, who would therefore be ‘okay’ with slipping down the pecking order of Formula One for a while in 2025.
“Because it simply means that I’m investing in 2026 at the right pace compared to my competitors,” emphasizes Vowles, who also explains that where you finish in the world championship in 2025 also depends on how strongly the other teams focus on the future.
The World Cup ranking depends on “how willing others are to take the risks I take,” says Vowles. After all, Williams will probably not be the only team to gear next year’s development largely towards 2026.
