The head of Willams F1, James Vowles, outlined his position on the arrival of the Andretti team in Formula 1…
James Vowles: “Williams is against adding an 11th team. I am categorically against it. And I will explain my position.
I am responsible for 900 employees of my company. If you look at Companies House records, you’ll see that we’re losing money. Seriously unprofitable. Losses amount to tens of millions. The reason is that we invest in this sport to become better. We believe in where the sport is going, we believe in the direction of its development.
It should be understood that we are not the only ones who lack financial stability. This applies to about half of the teams. And I believe that adding an 11th team only makes sense if the 10th team is stable.
We’re lucky our owners really believe in what we do and invest in it. But for sports in general, it is important to care about stability and make thoughtful decisions.
Everyone says that everything is fine now – in some aspects it is, but when hundreds of millions are invested in sports, we are all very careful about possible risks. We made it clear from the very beginning that we would be happy to attract new partners, but the pie must grow, not shrink.
To be clear, I’m not against Andretti or GM, quite the opposite. I applaud the GM and hope to build a relationship with them if things don’t work out. This is an incredible company that, in my opinion, will make the sport better. It’s not that we are against new people coming into the sport, but we are very careful about protecting the sport that we have now.”
2023-10-07 05:25:00
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