Williams is in an interesting place at the moment. I can’t help a cross-sports comparison and Team Principal James Vowles feels like a more front-facing Brendon McCullum.
If you don’t know who McCullum is, he’s England’s current Test Cricket coach, and his new regime with the England team and Captain Ben Stokes has been nicknamed “Bazball”, with his players having a more cavalier, aggressive edge to their cricket. They’re attacking far more balls, going for the win as opposed to taking draws, often going at 5 runs an over and being unafraid of chasing huge 350+ scores for the win. For the most part, we’re on board. It’s entertaining, it’s fun, and it’s largely been successful. 17 wins, eight defeats and one draw since Bazball began in June 2022. But there’s always been the niggling doubt about the whole thing too.
From the forced retirement of Jimmy Anderson to the cultish nature of the mantra to a drawn Ashes series at home that felt like a defeat, despite a large amount of the audience onboard, there have been questions asked that have got us to this point, with another Ashes series down under just 18 months away.
That’s how I feel about Year 2 of James Vowles’ Williams, and a lot of that has centred around Logan Sargeant.
Now, in Vowles’ early defence, Sergeant was never really his driver, one of the last major decisions Jost Capito made before departing as team principal himself. Sergeant himself was a decent junior, with a couple of feature race wins in Formula 2 with Prema, but he was a step behind the more high-profile names of recent years, like Oscar Piastri, Theo Pourchaire and Liam Lawson, who have either made F1 or really should have. Sargeant could have probably done with a second year in F2, and I can’t say this with certainty, but I wonder if the appeal of an American driver back in F1 led to the older regime rushing him through.
Safe to say, it hasn’t worked out. In his defence, his rookie year had him come up against Alex Albon in his best year in F1 to date. A year where Albon scored 27 out of the team’s 28 points, sweeping Sergeant in Qualifying, with a 19-3 record in races. Now expecting Sargeant to walk in and match a season that my colleagues thought was the 10th best in all of Motorsport last year was never a realistic expectation, but to be so far off the pace, including a couple of nasty wrecks (Japan in particular, which he replicated last week), there were questions to be asked about his future immediately.
I remember the closing rounds of that season and Vowles constantly being asked about the American’s future and him brushing the subject aside and saying “We’ve got targets for him to hit”. It’s not normal to see a driver confirmed for a season after it’s over, but eventually, Sargeant got that second season. It didn’t exactly ring of confidence though, and when Alex Albon wrecked his car in Australian practice and they essentially gave Logan’s car to him, the writing was on the wall. Williams had far more faith in Albon to score points than Logan. A tough but valid decision, but likely a confidence wrecker for the American.
Williams as a team hasn’t been anywhere near as good this year compared to last year, but only one race where he threatened the points at Silverstone was never going to stop Vowles from crashing at Carlos Sainz’s hotel for snuggles1. And while I don’t think he was ever so bad they had to fire him immediately, writing off a car on the first weekend of a new upgrade was likely the final straw.
Everything beyond this has me conflicted. A lot of people have spoken out in defence of Sargeant in terms of the lopsided equipment and asking whether he had the greatest chance to succeed. He probably hasn’t, but was there anything ever on track to force the issue? Probably not. And if you were ultimately proven right with your fears about giving him a second year, why give it to him to begin with, only to bench him after 15 races this season and take the PR damage from a mid-season sacking? I think Logan will be a fine fit in Prema’s IndyCar team, he’s exactly on that sort of level that has seen drivers come in and be successful, like Christian Lundgaard, Callum Illot and Marcus Armstrong.
Williams are giving the rest of the season to Franco Colapinto, Argentina’s first F1 driver in 22 years. He’s having a very solid rookie season in F2; currently sixth in the standings at time of writing with a Sprint race win in Imola and a couple of Feature Race second places in there too. Also has good results in Sportscars. He’s a talented young driver no doubt, but… a part of me can’t help but feel like what’s the point?
We know he likely has no future at Williams itself with Albon and incoming Carlos Sainz both tied down through at least 2026. At best, this is a “shop window” advertisement if Franco is good, but… for what seat? Red Bull has plenty of depth with Liam Lawson favoured and their own F2 prospect in Isack Hadjar waiting in the wings if they want to clean house. That only leaves Sauber, and they could easily keep Valtteri Bottas, Zhou Guanyu, or promote Pourchaire or Zane Maloney from within. As we’ve seen with Alpine recently promoting Jack Doohan, if you’re going to take a punt on someone, you do so from within.
Colapinto won’t win the F2 title so he can still come back in 2025 if he wants, but it feels redundant when you’ll have nearly twice the sample size Liam Lawson had when he cameo’d for RB. And with two highly-touted S-Tier talents Kimi Antonelli and Ollie Bearman also coming up, it’s hard to see the openings on the grid as of right now, or if he’s at their level to force someone else to make a move. At face value it’s nice that Williams is giving Colapinto a chance in the short-term, but in the long term, I’m not convinced this is the right move, because where does Franco go from here? It’s a very high risk long-term proposition and I’m not convinced the Williams car is good enough to score points.
And that leads us back to Bazball and James Vowles. Don’t led the hotel room flirting and motivational speeches fool you, he’s as ruthless as the Williams regime of old, the days when Damon Hill and Nigel Mansell were sacked after winning Championships. Vowles wants to be win. He’s spoken out massively about his greater vision and his five-year plan to turn this team into podium sitters and challengers. We’re in Year 2, and this team has taken a beating. It’s unlikely they get back to 7th place and the 28 points they scored last year, and they’re far closer to wooden spoon status with Sauber. The overweight chassis, the end of Sargeant, the chassis flipping, the massive upgrade package actually being illegal, the frustration of Albon not being able to repeat his 2023 heroics and the lack of spare parts, it’s adding up to a team that’s massively underwhelmed when people understandably have started asking for more.
And I think they’ve escaped larger criticism because we’ve seen a glimpse of what this team can do. In the same way that in cricketing circles, despite the hiccups, we’re onboard with Ben Stokes and Bazball. But greater tests are looming over the horizon and most F1 team bosses and long-term plans don’t get the five year treatment when teams disappoint for long enough. Ask Alpine how the last two of those have gone.
Vowles has done a lot of talking. He’d better hope his 2026 car delivers.
- Actual results may vary* ↩︎
