James Vowles

Yes, there was some of the discussions after Cota, but you know what I mean.

So do we need to have a rules of engagement document kind of like when things were at its worst at Mercedes between Lewis and Nico Rosberg, where they had a massive document that James Vowles has spoken about when he was one of the senior members of the Mercedes staff dealing with the very big personalities in both sides of the garage, does Ferrari need that with Lewis and with Charles? It might be helpful.

Lewis was probably in the best position to win a race in Mexico city.

And that just did not happen.

Going to start recording.

One thing I hadn't realised is I interviewed James Vowles earlier and all the lights behind me were still Williams blue.

So if you spotted that the lights go from orange to blue back to orange again, you'll know why.

That's because I slightly panicked because Oscar Piastri was just there talking to me.

And right after me, Fever and F1 are speaking about their partnership on the same stage.

And then right before it, James Vowles is talking with Atlassian.

So I don't know how I ended up in an F1 sandwich, but...

I love this sandwich and also feel like you need to do a little behind-the-scenes interviewing in the green room for our podcast.

What are you doing, man? And then he crashed.

Dude, they have, like, all James, every fucking week, I have to hear about James Vowles and the fucking budget and how that, you know, like, he comes out, like, he's fucking Oliver Twist.

Can we have some more, please? Can we have some more cap spend for the wind tunnel? Because Claire Williams didn't leave us in good enough

order, please.

This isn't probably going to go.

What are you hoping is going to happen?

It's also just like, listen, there is validity to what James Vowles is saying.

There's validity into the longer scheme.

The next question comes from Mark Swain.

It's often been said on this podcast that James Vowles has credit in the bank for what he's done at Williams.

With yet another poor showing within a poor season, when does his credit run out or does he start next season afresh? Yeah, the credit in the bank phrase is one I quite like with Vowles.

I think there's a number of things here.

But you're looking for that constant improvement.

And then if that doesn't happen, I think if you're the ownership, you need to really look into why has this happened? Is this hidden problems you couldn't have seen? Problems you've not understood? Decisions you've made that were not correct? Or is it just part of a painful process? Because it's always going to take a long time to catch up, even in the cost cap here in Formula One.

And James Vowles has, with some justification, pointed out some of the limitations that exist for smaller teams to play that game of catch up.

So we have to be realistic and fair about the scale of the challenge.