25/08/2025
NEWS STORY
Alex Albon cites James Vowles for the turnaround at Williams, the Thai driver delighted the Grove outfit has left the "doom and gloom" in the past.
During its darkest period, when Williams appeared to be one of the perennial back-markers, it was difficult, even for seasoned reporters on the sport, to believe what was happening, while newcomers will have merely seen the British team as also rans.
The most successful British team of all time in terms of constructors' titles, the Grove outfit's decline was as inexplicable as it was sudden.
While the appointment of Vowles as team boss hasn't yet led to podiums, it is clear that the Briton is turning things around and that slowly and surely the team is moving forward.
What led to the decline we don't know, and at best can only surmise, for even the former Mercedes man was shocked at how out of date the team's facilities and infrastructure was.
Working with the team's new owners, Vowles is breathing new life into the Grove outfit, and Albon, who joined when the team was probably at its lowest point, can see and appreciate the difference.
"The biggest thing is the culture of the team," he tells RacingNews365. "You walk into Grove, it looks the same, but you go inside and it feels different," he adds.
"When I think about the biggest difference, it's purely when I remember my first time at Williams," he continues. "Going to the factory, no one was very confident, people were talking badly about themselves, which is never a good sign. Possibly a bit stuck in their old ways, and just a bit doom and gloom, really.
"You get this feeling, he talks about this a lot, of breaking everything down and seeing how it builds back up," he says of Vowles. "So there's a freedom and a kind of an openness to everything that we go about our racing. There's no ego involved.
"The feedback and the work that we do as drivers really gets taken on. There's just this energy to be better.
"That culture definitely wasn't there when I first joined. And now it's great because you have, I won't call it a young team, but it's been rejuvenated in terms of it's just, it's energy, it's a really exciting place to be."