Vowles: Williams 'clearly on crutches' due to team's personnel voids

James Vowles has a revival strategy for Williams, but to get the ball rolling the team needs to recruit additional personnel to address critical "voids" in its organization, and until that is done, Williams is operating "on crutches".

Vowles has been at the helm of Williams since February of this year, orchestrating the Grove-based outfit's recovery – both financially and structurally – while also tending to its day-to-day affairs.

The former Mercedes strategist realized a nice coup recently by convincing former Alpine chief technical officer Pat Fry to commit to Williams' future, a move that Vowles hopes will encourage more senior staff from rival teams to jump onboard in the coming months.

But until the Grove-based outfit strengthens its engineering department, Williams' leadership team is forced to direct its focus away from its recovery plan, leaving the F1 outfit relying on temporary support and in a state of transition.

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• Vowles: Fry appointment shows Williams now 'worth the journey'

"We're fortunate with the team I have behind me at the moment because they are filling voids that exist. But clearly, we're on crutches," admitted Vowles.

"We're trying to do 10 things and it's always better if you focus on one.

"I'm not a strong engineer within the paddock. There are much stronger engineers than I am.

"What I am though is someone with a vision of where we want to get to and lead people there in that direction. People, at the moment, are very much aligned with that view."

Vowles says that bringing onboard trusted recruits acting as "lieutenants" will help spur ideas throughout the team's organizational hierarchy as well as help divert more of his time towards Williams' longer term ambitions, an area where he believes his expertise will be better applied.

"At the moment, we have a small leadership team that are cascading ideas," he explained.

"But you get an almost exponential improvement in the amount of people you put in place, the training you put in place, and the ideas, the more you have lieutenants that you trust. That’s not the case today.

"The case today is I'll be spending 10 minutes on what we're doing technically for the next few races, 10 minutes on what we're going to do strategically across the race, 10 minutes on how we are going to spend money in three years' time, 10 minutes on the F1 commission," he added.

"The more I can focus in on the bits that I think I'll be stronger at, which is strategically across the next five years - how we move chess pieces into a strong pace - the stronger Williams will become."

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