Vowles on how he started his career: 'All 11 teams sent rejection'
F1 News
- Sam Godber
James Vowles, Williams' current team boss, has been active in Formula 1 for over twenty-two years. Before taking up the position of team boss, Vowles worked for Mercedes for many years. With that team, he went through the extremely successful period, winning no fewer than eight constructors' titles. That the route to Formula 1 did not come naturally, however, the Briton reveals in an interview with the official Formula 1 website.
In the late 1990s, Vowles was studying at the University of East Anglia. However, a subject package that included maths and computer science caused the Briton to start having doubts about his future:"The reason why I chose those two subjects – mathematics and computer science – was because I was good at them. I had no idea what I was going to transfer them into as a job, I was just simply doing things that I thought gave me scope to do a huge amount in life."
Vowles applied to all the teams on the grid
At that point, the current Williams team boss decided he wanted to go in a completely different direction. Vowles decided that his future would lie in Formula 1. "I decided, about a year in, there was zero chance I’d be doing this for 30 years of my life, so I applied to all 11 teams, completely changing direction over where I was going. I got 11 rejection letters back and posted them on the wall."
Eleven rejections provided additional motivation for Vowles. He decided to gain motorsport experience alongside his university studies. The Briton obtained an engineering degree at Cranfield University and decided to refocus his career path on Formula 1 .
Starting F1 career at BAR
And yes, Vowles was hired at the BAR team in 2001. At that team, he would then go through the entire development of the team; BAR became Honda, and when Honda decided to pull the plug on its Formula 1 project, Ross Brawn took over the estate in 2009. Vowles then had his first successes with Brawn GP; that team won both championships that year. In 2010, Mercedes took over the team, after which Vowles remained with the German racing stable until 2022. There, he experienced six world titles for Lewis Hamilton and no fewer than eight constructors' titles.