James Vowles Says F1’s Cost Cap Has Built a ‘Two-Tier Championship’ That Is Punishing Williams

• Williams team principal James Vowles says Formula 1’s cost cap has built a “two-tier championship” rather than closing the competitive gap between teams.
• Vowles says the cap achieved long-term financial stability but failed on the other two goals it was designed for, with the top four teams now taking 83 percent of the points on offer.
• Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur pushed back, saying the cap has made the sport healthier financially and has attracted new investors from outside Formula 1.

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Vowles Says the Numbers Prove the Cap Is Working Against Teams Like Williams

James Vowles has told Formula 1 that the cost cap built to level the playing field has instead produced a “two-tier championship,” with Williams among the teams paying for it. Speaking at the news conference ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, a weekend staged at Sepang as a late stand-in after the original Bahrain date was pulled from the calendar, the Williams team principal said the financial regulation introduced in 2021 had met only one of its three original aims.

“First and foremost, I own the mistakes that we made this winter, and we need to detach that from that question. We have gone backwards, we had a car that was overweight,” Vowles said, responding to a question about how realistic it was to expect a team like Williams to close the gap to the front.

The Three Goals the Cost Cap Was Built On

Vowles explained that when the teams agreed to the cost cap in the middle of the Covid pandemic, three outcomes were promised to them.

“But actually, when we did the cost cap, this is way back in Covid, when we had a phone call about it, there were three key tasks that we wanted out of it,” he said. “We wanted long-term financial sustainability, and I think in that goal, not just have we achieved it, but we’ve exceeded it. This business now has good investment that allows us to go on, and they’re businesses. They weren’t businesses before 2021 at all.”

On the other two targets, sporting equity and bringing the field closer together, Vowles was blunt.

“The two others that went with it were sporting equity and, effectively, compression of the field, so effectively competitiveness that compressed together. Those are the three goals of cost cap, and those two have failed.”

The Numbers Behind the Gap

Vowles pointed to statistics showing competition has narrowed rather than spread after the cap arrived. He said that under the cost cap, the top four teams are scoring 83 percent of the points, up from the 70s before the rule began, and that the rest of the grid now reaches the podium just 5 percent of the time, down from 10 percent previously.

“In other words,” he said, “we have made the situation worse … I can give you a whole bunch of statistics, but the cost cap has made it worse, not better.”

Caught in a ‘Cost Cap Trap’

Vowles joined Williams from Mercedes in 2023 and has spoken before about how the move exposed just how far the team was behind operationally. He returned to that theme in Malaysia.

“I’m probably unique because I went from the best team to the worst team. I think that’s fairly clear. What I hadn’t appreciated or realised when you do that jump is just how little exists,” he said.

“When you’re in a cost cap, I’m not spending money on the car. I’m spending millions, tens of millions actually, just on basic systems, so you just know where a part is in the factory.”

“So that’s not going to the car, it’s not going to a front wing, it’s not going to an upgrade. It’s going on systems that I need to do just to do the very basics. So, we’re caught in a cost cap trap, because if I do anything short-term, and I always talk about investing in the future, now you understand why. If I do anything that’s about this year, I will slow myself down in the future, and I can’t do that. We have a two-tier championship. That’s not me telling you that.”

“That is just what is on the table right now in terms of points score. And I think, and this is where we have to come together as a business, that’s not right in terms of what we want for the future. We do want the ability for, if we do a good job, we should have the ability to fight for that. Even last year, which was a great year, the gap on points between us and P4, between us and Ferrari, was 238 points. It’s not a small amount. It’s an absolute gulf, and we were on the podium three times.”

“In cost cap, and I didn’t appreciate it until I came into Williams, it really penalises you in terms of what you’re doing,” Vowles added.

Vowles Wants the Rules Rewritten, Not Removed

Vowles made clear he is not calling for the cost cap to be scrapped. He still backs the idea behind it, even as he argues it needs reworking.

“The solution isn’t to take cost cap away,” he said. “As I said before, we have a brilliantly financially stable sport now as a result of it, but we do need to think about what mechanisms we have in there to make sure we’re all playing with the same tools and the same mechanisms, because today we’re not. That’s a bit lengthy, but that’s my thoughts on it.”

Vasseur Offers Ferrari’s Side of the Argument

Sitting next to Vowles at the news conference, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur gave a different account of what the cost cap has delivered for Formula 1.

“What we have to keep in mind is that before the cost cap, 2018, 2017, 2016, for sure the business in general was much worse, but we had also five or six teams in bankruptcy or almost in bankruptcy,” Vasseur said.

“And it’s not just the fact that the business is going well, it’s the fact that we are sending the message that everybody can compete, right or wrong, but this is the message. And this is also attracting new investors and new OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) in the business,” he said.

The valuations behind that argument are stark. Every team on the current grid is now valued at more than $1 billion, with Forbes putting Williams at $2.5 billion for 2025, a sharp rise from the under $200 million that Claire Williams, daughter of team founder Frank, accepted from Dorilton Capital in August 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. Mercedes, for its part, was valued at a record $6 billion last November after CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz bought a 5 percent stake in the team for $300 million.

Vowles’ argument is not that the money has failed to arrive. It is that the money has not been spread evenly enough to let a team like Williams fight for what the points table still calls a two-tier championship.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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