Williams make ‘overwhelmed’ Adrian Newey claim with finance theory shut down

Williams’ James Vowles has shared the reasons why Adrian Newey wouldn’t have been a good fit for his team rebuild.

Newey was available on the open market with several teams – including Williams – linked as possibly tempting the Red Bull chief technical officer to join, but Vowles has revealed why the legendary car designer wouldn’t have been a good fit.

Adrian Newey ‘would have been frustrated’ at Williams

Newey was confirmed as leaving Red Bull in May of this year, with the initial indication being that the designer, having spent nearly 20 years with the team, would leave F1.

But, quite quickly, Newey became linked with several teams as a possible destination – Ferrari and Aston Martin emerged as early contenders, while former Newey employers McLaren and Williams were also linked as possibilities.

Newey had worked with Williams through most of the 1990s, collaborating closely with Sir Patrick Head to form an imposing design outfit that created cars that simply dominated most of the decade.

But Williams is in a very different place nowadays – not only is the Williams family no longer involved, but the team is a midfield operator and very far from being the benchmark operation that it was 30 years ago.

Having come dangerously close to dropping out of the sport, the Williams family’s sale of the team to US investment company Dorilton Capital has steadied the ship and James Vowles was brought in from his senior role at Mercedes to take over as team boss.

There’s been an upswing in recent years, with the pieces slowly but surely coming together to rebuild a team that was once the dominant force of F1, but Vowles said the team isn’t yet ready to have someone like Newey on board.

“It has nothing to do with the money, even if there was a bidder competition at the end, in which we did not want to participate,” Vowles told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport , when asked why Williams hadn’t pursued Newey with greater vigour.

“I want people who believe in our project. Williams wasn’t ready for someone like Adrian yet.

“We still need to do so much reconstruction before we can provide the right environment for one of his class.

“He would have overwhelmed our team, and that could have achieved the opposite effect. He would have been frustrated in the end.

“Furthermore, I do not want to build an infrastructure that depends on a person. Williams is not about me, a driver or an engineer. It will be a team of 1,000 people working together. That is important. It brings you a short-term loss for a long-term profit.”

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In the end, it was Aston Martin who succeeded in convincing Newey to put pen to paper as he becomes a shareholder in the team in 2025 alongside a senior technical post.

Aston Martin is further down the path of investing in the team’s facilities than Williams is, with team owner Lawrence Stroll having pumped money into rebuilding its Silverstone factory and even constructing a brand-new start-of-the-art wind tunnel – the first of its kind in some 20 years.

Looking across at Stroll and his achievements, Vowles said he isn’t looking on with envy but is carving out the path he feels is correct for Williams.

“Lawrence is far more successful than I am,” he said.

“He has achieved much more than I did in my life. Aston Martin makes the right decisions and engages the right people, but they have a 2026 engine change in front of the chest.

“This always takes a time of acknowledgment. Now to your question: I want to go my own way, and it differs from the path of others, whether in the past or now. What do we have to lose?

“We are already in the middle. I want to set up the team carefully for the future, even though I still pay a price for it today. Our investments are well chosen. But we don’t run around with an open chequebook.”

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