Vowles at the wheel of one of Williams' crown jewels

40

Christian Horner isn't the only team principal who is getting to come out to play with his team's toys, with his Williams counterpart James Vowles also pulling on the racing gloves and getting up to speed.

Unlike Horner, Vowles never tried to be a racing driver in his youth. After a first degree in computer science he completed a master's in motorsport engineering and management.

He started in F1 with British American Racing in 2001 and stayed through its various iterations to become Mercedes' chief strategist, until he was cherry-picked to take over as team principal at Williams.

Now this weekend at Goodwood he's been able to experience what motor sport is really like at the sharp end, taking the wheel of Keke Rosberg’s Williams FW08 designed by Frank Dernie.

It debuted at the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix held at the Zolder circuit, with Rosberg going on to win the 1982 world drivers' championship. The car took two wins and two poles before it was retired after the 1983 European GP at Brands Hatch.

Vowles certainly looked like he was having the time of his life getting to live out every little boy's childhood dream. Although there might have been an understandable element of pure terror in that grimace!

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.