29 January 2024 , 16:15
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James Vowles has revealed the blunt but hilarious advice given to him by Toto Wolff as he departed Mercedes to take over as Williams boss.
Vowles took charge of his own Formula 1 team for the first time last February. He was drafted in at Williams to begin a long-term project with the end goal of restoring one of the sport's grand old teams to its former glory.
Before that, he was part of the furniture at Mercedes having served in several roles over the years. Latterly, he was strategy director and a key right-hand man for team principal Wolff - even tipped to be the Austrian's eventual successor.
That may still one day become the reality but, in the short term, Vowles couldn't resist the chance to make the Williams project his own. Speaking about his departure, he told the High Performance podcast the advice given to him by Wolff before his departure.
"I think he said, 'Don't be s**t' - [that] was his advice! Which I'm trying to do," he said. "Other than that, he knows that I've been forming for this for quite a while, so there was little he could provide about it.
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"Even today, it's not just him, I would say Fred [Vasseur, Ferrari chief] and Otmar [Szafnauer, former Alpine boss] - before he left - and a few others were guiding voices where I can happily call them, even though they are adversaries. It's not asking for advice but they can give me guidance."
Vowles went on to explain that it would have been no surprise to his former boss when he informed him that he would be leaving. The 44-year-old said: "I knew my long-term wasn't going to be doing strategy for the rest of my life...
Williams team principal James Vowles is using what he learned at Mercedes to push his new team forward (Getty Images)"Toto was kind enough with his time to give me as much experience as he could, he knew where he was forming me towards. It doesn't mean that I had a job within Mercedes to be team principal there, but he provided me with his time, knowledge and experience, and more responsibilities.
"That started happening, so simulator drivers, then race drivers, started to come beneath me and I started working with our Formula E outfit, GT3 team, elements of finance and the cost cap and other bits and bobs. I just kept pulling it in.
"You can't just keep doing so what I did is not absolve responsibilities, but build a team that just did all the strategy bits for me. And so I could focus on that growth. The direction of the path being clear - once you've made yourself out of engineering and you're focused a lot more on how the company runs, you have a better idea of how to step into this role.
"Not that I ever thought this role could appear but, if it did, I wanted to have the maximum amount of exposure, so I'd be ready to jump into it. Toto is incredible at what he does, no doubt about it, and has many, many more years as the best one of the best team principals in the pit lane.
"So it got to a point where I had to decide for my life, not for Mercedes' life. That decision came when I very swiftly realised that I think the growth opportunities I have, the growth for learning - that was slowing down at Mercedes.
"I can go to a completely different level by going elsewhere. So I had honest conversations with Toto across that year period. It wasn't a big surprise to him that winter. And it's why also he was accepting of the fact that he let me move on. He wanted me to move on as well as a result of it."