When Williams team boss James Vowles gave a Ming dynasty analogy to the team’s infrastructure, many questioned if it was an exaggeration. Apparently, Vowles was spot on and the analogy doesn’t only refer to the Grove team’s infrastructure deficit, but the team’s overall work culture and procedures on a fundamental level. According to The Race, Williams had been using Microsoft Excel to map and track all of its car parts. Be it a nut-bolt of the car floor, the British team were logging in entries into Excel sheets which Vowles deemed as “useless”!
Thus, the process at Williams that involved a basic Excel spreadsheet system instead of a state-of-the-art modern database system shocked Vowles. This happened after Vowles and newly joined CTO Pat Fry opted to change the car’s design base.
According to The Race, Vowles said, “Our chassis went from a few hundred bits to a few thousand bits. That’s just one part of the car.”
This rise in parts for the 2024 Williams car meant that the team had to handle 20,000 individual components and parts using Microsoft Excel! At a time when F1 teams’ valuations have crossed the billion-dollar mark and every team spends over $130 million every year, it seems strange that this is the way Williams have been operating.
This is what Vowles thought and still went for the car design overhaul. The 44-year-old feels this is a necessary pain Williams needs to go through at once. Simultaneously, he ensured the migration of the Excel sheet data into a digital system.
Vowles gave his perspective, “The Excel list was a joke. Impossible to navigate and impossible to update.” He cited how the team had to track multiple aspects of the process, including the parts availability, quantity, delivery or completion date, etc.
Vowles added, “When you start tracking now hundreds of 1000s of components through your organisation moving around, an Excel spreadsheet is useless.”
Is this fundamental deficit in Williams’ team culture holding it back?
The primitive tracking process that Williams deployed reflects why they are perhaps behind the curve relative to most of the competition. The delay in production that happened on their 2019 car which made them miss two days of pre-season testing makes sense now after the revelation of these processes.
In 2024 as well, Williams were late on production despite many of its big parts such as the floor and the front wing being ready. It was due to the inefficiency of the team’s system that affected production flows and the tracking details made things even more complex.
The Grove-based team lacks much of the high-tech infrastructure many other teams use currently. While James Vowles is looking to maximize the potential of what they have, it is a much steeper task than one may perceive.
To bring a complete overhaul of processes and work culture that the team has used for over a decade is not an easy change. Still, Vowles mentioned that they need to do this to take a step toward getting to the next level. Solving issues at the fundamental level will be crucial for the British team to think about their complex problems and resolve them.
Thus, Vowles and Co. will need to take a bottom-up approach to revamp smaller aspects of the team. Can this help them get on par and beat its competition? Time will tell. For now, Williams are on a long journey of change and can’t think about making bold performance promises and setting unrealistic targets.
