We need to make one thing clear at the outset.
Your aspiring Formula 1 blogger does not like heights.
But when Williams not only decides to launch their challenger for the 2024 F1 season in New York City, but they invite you to meet with the team, you accept the invitation first, and worry about the details later. When those details eventually arrived, and noted that the reception and media roundtables would be held at 45 Rockefeller Plaza — described as a 40-story art deco building — your aspiring F1 writer breathed a little easier.
That is, until the change of venue.
45 Rockefeller Plaza was out, 30 Rock was in, and within minutes of learning of the switch, your hero was rocketing up to the Rainbow Room, 65 floors above the city streets.
At least we were not going to the Top of the Rock …
But there’s no use in complaining when you’ve got a job to do, or so Bryan Adams once taught me, so soon enough it was time to chat with Williams Team Principal James Vowles and their driver pairing for the 2024 season, Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant.
To say it is a new day at Williams would be an understatement. Fresh off a stunning seventh-place finish a season ago in the Constructors’ Championship, the team is looking to move even higher up the grid in 2024. But moving up the F1 grid comes at a price, which was the underlying theme of the event in New York City. Williams officially unveiled the FW46, this season’s challenger, at the Puma store in Midtown.
Puma and Williams announced last fall a “multi-year partnership” to begin during the 2024 season. The team also announced another partnership on Monday with Komatsu, to help on the data side. The Japanese technological company was previously partnered with the team during some of their stronger seasons in F1 and, much like their livery, is a nod to what once was, and what could be, for the team.
Vowles has consistently stressed the long-term approach at Williams, a refreshing viewpoint in a sport not known for patience, but the team boss does make it clear: Fighting up front is the goal.
“I’m confident we’ve, we’ve done a really good job,” said Vowles on Monday.
“But what I care about is us fighting up front properly for championships again.”
What is also refreshing about Vowles, beyond how he stresses the long-term when discussing Williams, is the lack of fear. F1 is not a sport for the meek of mind, whether you are the one climbing into the cockpit of a rocketship on wheels, or you are the one making the decisions those in those cars need to adhere to. Vowles may be patient, but he is certainly not scared about trying new things, nor is he scared of failure.
“So everything is about long-term resolution, not short-term [and] as the result of that is that we took and we will continue to take enormous risks with this company. I’m not going to be withheld by the restriction that my job is on the line,” added Vowles. “If we’re not doing a good enough job, the only way to get this team back to the front is break everything.
“I’ve used the terms internally and ‘break the cycle’ and it’s exactly what we are doing, whatever we have done before that, even what we’ve done the last two months. I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved.
“It’s not good enough.
“This is what it looks like and how do we get there, and it’s just giving everyone the idea of ‘this is the gap.’ I’ll be with you on this journey and I’ll be shouldering it if things go wrong. But take that as an opportunity to not be withheld by fear of change and a fear of failure that goes with it.”
One of the biggest decisions Vowles faced this off-season involved his driver lineup for 2024. The team finished in P7 with 28 points on the season, 27 of which came from Albon. Sargeant notched just a single point in his rookie campaign, and many wondered if Vowles would retain the American driver for a second season.
Vowles did just that, a decision that we have praised here at SB Nation, but it certainly comes with some risk.
Will that decision pay off? Vowles believes it will, because he is already seeing a much-improved version of Sargeant in the off-season.
“I hope you get me a chance to interview him because those that did last year to this year, you’re gonna see I think a far more confident man that is in the car. And it’s not because I’ve signed him,” explained Vowles. “We had some real honest chats about what was good and what was bad and how we have to start the season again. He’s changed his trainer, he’s changed his training regime. He is fitter and healthier than ever. And these are the signs of someone that wants this desperately.”
One thing that will also be different for Sargeant is this: Not everything will be a new experience for him. Absent the Chinese Grand Prix, Sargeant will have experience at each track on the grid this season. He now has a season under his belt of what it takes week in and week out to be consistent, and successful, in F1.
That too is a critical factor for Vowles.
“Now, at least he has experience of near enough most circuits but not all of them yet. There’s still some circuits he never would have seen before in his life. I haven’t asked him if he’s been to China before,” said Vowles. “But what he learned at the end of last year is that if you approach it and try and get everything out in one go, failure will happen. If you build up to it, which is what he was doing, you end up with far more success. And my job is to guide him through this first part of the season and make sure that he doesn’t try and reach for more than is available to him and approach it correctly.
“He has my support. That’s why he’s here in the car. Use that to the best of your ability and don’t overstretch from where you are, set yourself realistic expectations.”
Photo by Dan Istitene – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images
As for who is alongside Sargeant, Williams has Albon back for 2024 — and beyond, in some news that Vowles clarified on Monday — after his strong 2023 season. Albon is hoping to build off that success in the new season. But this past weekend in New York City, the driver had other things on his mind.
Namely, getting the right clothes for the weather and finding a table for dinner.
“Like the time of year is beautiful [in New York City], but it’s colder than the UK and I didn’t pack. [T]here’s a lot of restaurants and I didn’t realize you had to pre-book everywhere you go. So, we’re having to queue outside of restaurants everywhere. And the first night, I had to leave the queue, go buy a jacket, buy gloves and then come back to you,” described Albon.
While you would think one of the 20 F1 drivers on the grid would not face trouble finding a table, apparently NYC is a different setting.
“And I’m like, ‘can you name drop?’,” recalled Albon. “And they’re just like ‘they do nothing.’”
Albon’s name might not help him land a spot for dinner, but it has been linked with one of the most coveted spots in F1: The soon-to-be-vacated spot at Mercedes. With Lewis Hamilton’s shocking decision to leave Mercedes and join Ferrari for 2025, Albon has been named as one of the potential successors at Mercedes. While Vowles noted that Albon had signed with Williams through 2025 on Monday, Albon was still asked about that seat, and the Hamilton news in general.
“On my side, I think it’s pretty simple. Really. I’m here as a Williams driver,” declared Albon.
“I’m here to focus on bringing this team up, you know, and I enjoy that,” he continued. “I love being part of this team.”
As for the Hamilton news itself, Albon admitted that he was as shocked as everyone else, albeit for a slightly different reason.
“Normally we get a, a bit of a, a tick, a week, two weeks before, you know, something like that happens,” explained Albon. “But that was I was in Spain at the time, and that kind of threw me totally off guard.
“But good for him and I think more than anything good for Formula 1,” continued Albon. “It’s you know, a move like that is massive, but it’s hard, at least for me to put it into context. But when you just see the amount of talk and noise that generates because you know, it’s one of them like ‘Messi-to-Miami’ kind of stories.”
The conversation then turned to the upcoming season, and Albon’s hopes and expectations for the 2024 campaign. While all the teams are entering a voyage of the unknown — Williams fired up the FW46 for the first time on Monday, something Vowles noted he was sad to miss in person — there are higher expectations at Williams than there were a year ago, given how they finished in 2023.
In framing his expectations for 2024, Albon noted that there is still a huge mountain for the team to climb.
“It’s hard for me to put a number,” started Albon. “I also think that’s because if you look where we finished last year P7 and the gap we had to P6, but especially the gap to P5, there’s a huge mountain to climb.”
The main thing he is looking for is something that the entire organization is stressing.
Consistency.
“More often, I think consistency is a big feature for this year, and what I want to see us be better at. When you look at last year to this year, we had so many high peaks, but also we were going to race weekends where we knew we weren’t going to score points,” admitted Albon. “And that’s just because of the limitations of the car and how unique our car was this year with all the simulator work and development that we’ve done to that part.
“It is a totally different approach to how we normally went down.
“It’s, a complete divergence from the last three or four years that the team’s been been designed around. I believe we’re still gonna keep most of our good qualities. But hopefully, you know, when we go to tracks like Monaco or Barcelona, we should see a car that’s more in line and, and not out in Q1 and struggling.”
Albon then closed with some thoughts on Williams, the team’s storied history, and where they are headed as an organization, thanks to a brilliant question from The Athletic’s Madeline Coleman.
“I would say Williams is a team that’s changing.
“You know, we’re very proud of our heritage,” continued Albon. “You see that the reflection in the, in the livery shows that got that vinyl, which is to be honest with you, it wasn’t a detail that I really noticed so much when I was growing up, but when you see it back, the old cars, you go, ‘ok, it’s been there this whole time.’
“And what’s exciting for me is, you know, is we are transitioning and we are just thinking forward in every aspect. We’re really trying to grow as a team to be the very best livery is a total reflection of it,” Albon continued. “You can see that we’re, it’s subtle, we’re changing the color slightly and we’ve kind of got this gradient situation going on. But that’s exactly what we’re doing in the years from now to the future, is we are changing into this new, new team, this team that now is trying to get back to its previous years.
“But in the same way to do that, you do have to have this shake up, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Apologies for the glare, but just be grateful my hands were steady enough to take this photo. Again … heights!
The media roundtables concluded with Sargeant, the lone American driver on the grid coming off a rookie season that saw him collect his first F1 point but more importantly, keep his seat for a second season. Vowles promised a more confident driver, and that confidence came through on Monday.
“I feel like now I just sit here more calm, logical,” explained Sargeant when asked about the difference from his first season to his second. “I know what to expect. I know I need to manage myself over the course of a season.
“I know that I have some work I can do just staying a bit more emotionally regulated and I just, yeah, I feel, I feel great.”
Vowles also noted that Sargeant had revamped his training regimen for the upcoming season, and the young driver outlined some of the changes, including a routine that is absolutely not for the faint of heart.
“It was just hang out at the house and train, you know, multiple times a day. And got into ice baths,” outlined Sargeant. “That was fun.”
Why ice baths?
“Honestly, I just wanted to start doing things I don’t like doing. Just a bit of mental toughness, I guess. Every time you get an ice [bath], you don’t want to get an ice bath. But if you do it every single time then you know, you’re making a difference,” continued Sargeant. “Adrenaline rush. It’s amazing. It’s … it’s terrible, but then it’s amazing. You get in, you start struggling to breathe and that feeling is actually quite nice, like the panic and then, when you get out and then you have the nice sun, you just feel like on top of the world.”
Again, probably not for the faint of heart.
The conversation then shifted to the upcoming Super Bowl. Sargeant, a noted Miami Dolphins fan who attended a few games once the F1 season ended, seems rather split on who he is pulling for on Super Bowl Sunday.
“You can’t bet against Patrick Mahomes, but I would love to see Brock [Purdy] win just because the underdog story and he gets a lot of hate that he doesn’t deserve,” said Sargeant, something of an underdog in his own right.
Sargeant was also asked what his ideal Super Bowl would have been, including the halftime show.
Of course, the Dolphins have to be in. I would go Dolphins, and I would have liked to see Detroit,” said Sargeant. “And halftime show, it’s gonna sound so basic but like, like Drake and J. Cole.”
He was also asked if, given his own jet-setting experience, he had any advice for Taylor Swift. After all, the cultural icon’s potential journey from Tokyo to Las Vegas to catch Travis Kelce in the Super Bowl has been the basis for not just stories, but official statements from the Japanese Embassy.
Sargeant thinks she’ll be just fine.
“But I’m sure she’ll be all right, just sleep on the plane and start drinking at the Super Bowl.”
Ultimately, the main questions that Sargeant needs to answer come on the track. Getting a second year in F1 was not a given, and the announcement did not come until after the season had ended. So I asked: What does a successful season look like to him?
That’s when the confidence and determination that Vowles spoke of truly came through.
“It’s always one of the hardest questions at the start of the year because we don’t know where we’re going to be as a team. So I’m going to leave that out of it because, you know, we’ll ultimately find that out in Bahrain,” said Sargeant.
“But, personally, it’s quite simple.
“I want to make a big step forward from a personal aspect. I want to perform consistently over the course of a season at the level I know I can perform at,” continued Sargeant.
“And if I do that, that’ll be a big success.”
