James Vowles reveals the headache he helped ‘create’ for Williams while at Mercedes

Looking to the future, James Vowles says Williams could have a problem signing young talent as Mercedes, and other teams, have created a “void” by snapping up “all the future champion drivers”.

This season Mercedes have seven juniors in their ranks with Italian prodigy Andrea Kimi Antonelli leading the charge towards Formula 1 while Frederik Vesti and Paul Aron are also in the mix.

They were all signed when Vowles was at Mercedes where he was the team’s chief strategist before taking on the Williams’ team boss role.

Now also in charge of the Grove team’s junior ranks, Vowles has four F3 drivers on the books in Luke Browning, Franco Colapinto, Zak O’Sullivan and Oliver Gray as well as Jamie Chadwick.

But with teams looking further down the racing ranks, all the way into karting, Vowles believes there’s now a void that will mean he’ll have to look even further back for the next Williams star.

“我们的问题是,我认为所有的将来时e champion drivers have been near enough signed up, up to Antonelli,” Vowles said in an interview withAutosport.

“You have to go younger than Antonelli now, so now we have a problem, the gap has been created.

“We have Zak and we have Luke; we have many other drivers but Zak and Luke in Formula 3 who have potential. But it’s early days, in my opinion.

“What I’m looking for is someone who’s younger than Antonelli, where can they end up. So maybe we have a void.”

It’s a void he played a role in creating.

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“I was one of very few who created the Mercedes young driver was a programme, so I know how to make it,” Vowles added.

“挫折是我签署了一个很好的司机fore I left, Antonelli is in a good place.

“But I’d much rather create our own programme here, it’s under my roof that I can control because the money is not a problem, we’ll spend the money required to build it up.”

But just because he doesn’t have Antonelli on the Williams pay roll, that doesn’t mean the Italian couldn’t join the team in the years to come much like George Russell.

“It’s not out of the question that if Mercedes wanted to put Antonelli here,” he stated, “I’d be interested in the idea like we did with George, if I don’t have another driver of the same calibre.”

Russell, a Mercedes junior, spent three years racing for Williams, who are an engine customer of Mercedes, before stepping up to the Brackley squad in 2022.