Late nights, secret meetings and colossal contracts – James Vowles on how he signed Sainz

It’s been a heck of a chase – but after eight months or so, Williams Team Principal James Vowles finally got the driver he really wanted when he signed Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz alongside Alex Albon on a multi-year deal.

As Vowles sat in his office each week and mapped out the various driver market iterations and where Williams might sit within them (“it’s just a massive game of chess!”), there was one driver who kept coming out on top of his list – Carlos Sainz. He was, in Vowles’s mind, the best driver for the job.

Williams are in the midst of a rebuild, spearheaded by ex-Mercedes man Vowles who is bidding to turn a team that has fallen on harder times and lingers in the bottom half of the pack back into the behemoth that once crushed their rivals to dominate the championship.

Having re-signed one exciting talent in Alex Albon, Vowles identified Sainz very early on as a potential candidate for the project. Having never really interacted with the Sainzes, he lined up a first meeting at last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

“The first time I spent time with his family was in Abu Dhabi,” Vowles tells me exclusively, just moments after the announcement. “We had to run them around the back so they could come upstairs and come to my office to chat [without being seen]. That was the first time I chatted to all of them, and it was the first time I got to know them.

The 2023 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix witnessed the first talks between Vowles and the Sainz family

“We connected because they have family values which are very similar to my own – which is about honesty, being performant on track with no politics, and it’s about how do you do the best job you can with the equipment you have. It resonated a lot between both parties.

“This was Abu Dhabi 2023, so no one knows what is going to happen with Carlos. What I’m doing is making sure they are aware we’re serious about moving back towards the front and here we are – and get to know me. Then the news struck with Lewis [Hamilton leaving Mercedes and taking Sainz’s seat at Ferrari for 2025], which caught me off-guard, and caught Carlos off-guard at the same time. So, I started the normal negotiation procedure.

“All the way through – and it’s worth checking with Carlos as he’ll tell you the same thing – everything I have told him is the truth behind this project, so that means all the good bits and all the bad bits. It’s just been consistent from start to finish.

“This is who we are, this what we’re investing in, this why I believe in it, this is what it looks like in the future – do you want to be part of it?

“I believe in this project; I left the comfort of Mercedes to be here for good reason. We have a history that makes us the second-most successful team on the grid, we have real tangible investors who are serious behind this project, we want success and this is what success looks like. Fundamentally, the same couldn’t be said up and down the grid to the same level and the same requirements. And I think if no one takes this as a sign that Williams has changed, nothing will change you.”

Williams have bagged themselves a proven race winner in Sainz

Why did Vowles want Sainz so badly? Well, the Spaniard is arguably one of the best performing drivers of the moment, and secured the third victory of his career earlier this year in Australia. He’s also got a proven track record of delivering and enhancing teams wherever he’s been – from Toro Rosso to Renault, McLaren to Ferrari.

“I needed a leader, not just someone who is quick in the car,” says Vowles. “I wanted everything around them to be just right in order to create performance. Carlos has that. If you look at every team he’s gone to – look at where they started and where they finished. You’ll see he has a history of ending in a much better place in the team than when he started.”

Vowles was very public in his chase of Sainz. And he was relentless. He didn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer.

That meant Vowles had “more late-night events in a hotel room than I want to think about! [There were] a lot of late nights, lots of phone calls and him having the space to be able to think about it before we executed”.

Williams are on an upward trajectory

It could have gone either way – but Vowles says he would have had no regrets if Sainz turned him down.

“I was very public in the fact I wanted him as part of the team,” he says. “You can look like a hero or zero – I knew that from the beginning, but I wanted him to know how much he is a part of what I think the future of Williams looks like.

“The way you do that is put the heart on the end of your sleeve and you put it out there for the world to see. You can get hurt or you can get the strongest feeling emotionally from a connection from something. I’d much rather he and the world knows he’s an incredible athlete – and that I know we would work well together.

“If it had gone the other way, I still would have no regrets. You have to do what it takes in order to get the right people in the organisation. It’s hard to know the alternative side if it hadn’t happened – but all the work was worth it.”

Vowles was patient and gave Sainz the time to decide. Ultimately, this approach paid off. “I did say to him it’s probably the longest [contract in terms of length], by a long way,” he adds. “And Lewis’s contracts are difficult, to be clear!”

One thing that was non-negotiable was the length of the contract. Vowles wasn’t interested in just a one-year deal and having Sainz as a seat warmer while the Spaniard looked for somewhere better for 2026. He wanted commitment to the project.

“There were moments across the last few months where I’ve said ‘if you’re coming for the money or the short term, it won’t work for either party,’” he adds. “This is a proper journey. It’s going to be difficult, but incredibly rewarding.”

It’s a huge shot in the arm for the Williams project that Sainz chose Williams over the incoming Audi works project and the works outfit of Alpine, who dangled the carrot of chasing a Mercedes power unit supply.

“He was the first to point out to us that the opposition is incredible,” adds Vowles. “We have one of the biggest OEMs in the world [Audi], one his father has won with. You can’t easily turn it down. You have a team that has won a race more recently than we have. We can’t ignore that. But what he saw with us is not where we are today but where we’re going.”

Sainz opted against Audi despite his family’s strong ties to the brand

Nailing the second driver for 2025 is another task ticked off for Vowles, but he’s aware there’s still so much to do – namely delivering a package that is worthy for both Sainz and Albon to excel with.

“This is huge, this is really important in our stepping stone of how we move forward,” says Vowles. “Emotionally, it made everything worthwhile in just a second. He’s a tremendous milestone and it means a lot to me and the team.

“We played the team a video of Carlos announcing the news and you could not hear a word of it for at least the first 45 seconds because of the cheers, the shouts, the clapping. That reaction tells me everything I need to know – which is they believe in this decision as much as I believe in it.

“But now I need to demonstrate to him, the team and the world, that we’re on the right path.”