The racing career of James Vowles
- Rebus T. Farkas
- Feb 6
- 19 min read
There are many reasons to admire James Vowles: his policy of honesty and openness, his drive to keep pushing and improving himself, his understandable technical explanations delivered in a voice that makes whale sounds feel like air horns; and don't even get me started on his radio message from the 2018 Austrian GP where he managed to calm down an understandably upset Lewis Hamilton by publicly assuming blame for a bad strategy call... However, for me, one of the most impressive aspects is his racing career.
Make no mistake, it is by no means unusual for someone working in F1 to have a bit of hands-on racing experience themselves. In fact, for many people, that's the reason they ended up working in the sport: because they failed as drivers. After all, the interest in racing and the competitive spirit are all but part of the job description. In turn, this profession gives a bit of an advantage to an amateur racing driver over the competitors. However, what's special in James Vowles' case is how serious he is about his racing. The team principal of Williams has raced in the Asian Le Mans series as recently as 2022. He was also set to race there in 2023, but he got too busy being appointed to run an F1 team, so his next appearance in the series has to wait.
Even after he became a team principal, he didn't hang up his racing suit. If anything, he became more public about his racing (before his successful ALMS stint, he kept a low profile), checking in from his testing day with Garage 59 and even driving an old Williams Racing car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...
In this blog post, I intend to summarize what is known (or at least what can be found online) about James Vowles' racing career. It may not sound like much at first, but trust me, that in itself is an ambitious goal. Throughout my "research" (as an actual researcher, I find it hard to use that word for an activity that consists largely of googling and reading), I have run into official looking documents about his entry to events where Google found no matches to its name; or where he only technically participated because it had an overlapping race with another racing series where he was actually active; and even an entry in a race that supposed to have happened in 2007 - two years before he claims he started racing.
How can I be sure that I found everything or that the information I found is correct? The short answer is I can't. Although I do have some evidence that my research was exhaustive enough: his own content.
JV sports
When you search for "James Vowles racing" (and you scroll past all the "James Vowles, the team principal of Williams Racing" entries that have nothing to do with his racing career), you can find two highly credible sources of information: his website and his old Instagram account. Fair warning: both of these are outdated, as the last entry on his website invites the reader to "Watch this space for news on Gulf 12hrs 2022 and Asian Lemans 2023" (spoilers: he didn't end up participating in either of those events) and his last Instagram post is from February 2022. However, I think it is still useful to go over the information provided.
In the Services part of his website, he describes himself as a "Competitive, race ready FIA International C & FIA Bronze driver". I see a lot of misunderstandings about what these credentials mean. The FIA classifies the drivers based on their age and experience. Bronze is the lowest rank, applicable to anyone over 30 and "with little or no single-seater experience". I'm not trying to diminish his expertise; I'm just saying this in itself is not a big deal among racing drivers. (Also, if you're like me and you got confused by all the technical terms, "International C" is just his driving permit that allows him to drive a bit bigger vehicles than the usual B.)
In the About Us section, among other information, there is an interesting statement:
"The goal of JV Sports is to drive with the very best teams, and win Lemans in the newly introduced GT3 category."
Aside from what I assume is a typo in the name of one of the most prestigious racing events, what I find really interesting is that the LMGT3 category was only introduced in 2024. At the time of writing this post it has only happened once. If he plays his cards right, he could be one of the first winners.
In the James Vowles section, he lists his F1 experience as a strategist (again, the website is outdated), claims to be racing since 2009, and lists "experience" in a number of categories: GT4, GT3, LMP3, F4, F3, FRenault.
A very quick introduction about these categories: In Endurance racing, GT categories are for cars that are regular road cars (sports cars) turned into race cars. On the other hand, LMP stands for "Le Mans Prototype" - these are cars which a specially designed for racing. Much like with the Formula 1-4 cars categories, the higher the number the lower the category. GT4 and LMP3 are both entry-level categories. Unlike Formula cars, these categories often compete together in endurance races, racing each other on the track, which I find interesting.
The word "experience" has a wide range of meanings throughout the website, which is a bit confusing because while he has participated in races in some of those categories, for others, the only evidence I could find is that of testing. (Not to mention his F1 experience, which is, of course, absolute high level racing experience, just not as a driver.) I am not saying all this to criticise the website but rather to demonstrate why it is so hard to find accurate information and why it is almost certain that despite my best efforts, there will be incorrect or missing information, for which I am sorry.
Now, with all that said, let's get into it.
Early racing career
In an interview from last year, he described his early racing career as follows.
“I always knew that what I did was too late on in my life, but there were dabbles in karting, there were dabbles in saloon car racing, there were dabbles in Le Mans prototypes as well, and it was always helped by others around me that had finances to support me through that process, because I was at a point in my life, career and finances where it was required.
My performance was okay – that’s the best way I can put it to you! I was always overly cautious, because it’s never your vehicle and you don’t want to damage it. What I always said to myself, though, is that when I get myself to where I’m financially stable enough, I will properly invest back into racing.”
Here's what I could find about his early racing career.
Millbrook Clubman Rally 2007
As mentioned before, the oldest record I could find of James Vowles racing is from two years before 2009. According to this website, he participated in the "Millbrook Clubman Rally" in 2009. While the website I linked contains very detailed data about all the times and results in all the stages, it is very hard to find details of the event itself anywhere on the internet. The most I could find is that it only existed from 2006-2008, which explains why it is hard to track down the information.
His partner was Gary Johnson, and a real article would probably include a short bio of him here. I apologize, as I'm sure he's a very interesting person, but after a quick search, I realized that there are multiple racing drivers of the same name, and after all the rabbit holes I went down for this blog post, I refused to open another can of worms.
The two of them drove a Seat Ibiza (see pictures below). It is a 1.8L Seat Ibiza R that seems to be JV's car. By a delightful little coincidence, if you search for "James Vowles"+"Seat Ibiza" you'll also find an article about Toto Wolff's life where a Seat Ibiza was also an important milestone.
The pair finished 15/57 overall and 9/22 (including retirements) in their category, which seems like a pretty good result.
MSVT Trackday Trophy 2014
According to this website, the MSVT Trackday Trophy is organized with the goal of making it easy for novice drivers to get into the sport: reasonably relaxed regulations make it easy to prepare the car, having two drivers helps with the financial burden of the sport and the schedule where everything happens on the same day makes logistics easier.
JV's "setup" is pretty similar to that of the Millbrook rally: same partner, same car. As for the results, I came across documents from several different races, but I could not find an overall results table.
On the other hand, I did find other gems corresponding to this series. First, here you can find a picture that doesn't circulate between JV fans (yet), so I was quite proud of myself, for finding something new. (I would have included the picture as others, but the user clearly asks to be contacted if their picture is used, and that means I'd have to talk to another human being, so...) Interestingly, the caption starts with "JPV Racing" which based on other captions appears to be a team name.
But my absolute favourite finding for this whole post is the name James Vowles appearing in an issue of Autosport - a magazine that has pages dedicated to F1 - for something other than the pinnacle of motorsports. Buried within the 81st page of the October 30 2014 issue is a small section presenting the results of a recent Trackday Trophy race, where the pair ended up 6th and made the cut to appear in print. Simply lovely.
Classic Thunder Touring Car Championship 2015
I can not tell you much about this championship, other than what you can find out from the name (classic touring cars racing), becuse it has no official website. It appears to be a Classic Touring Car Racing Club event, which does have a Facebook page but only since 2016. You can find the final results here, and if you look at the document carefully, you might notice that he won the championship in his class! Congratulations, Mr Vowles!
Besides the obvious, I was most excited about this championship, mainly because this page claims that James Vowles had a podium here (it also shows another podium in another championship, but from the looks of it, it's just an overlapping race), which I find interesting. We've all seen James Vowles on F1 podiums multiple times; the Williams fans among us hope to see him there again, but according to this information, he was once on the podium as a driver. Isn't that beautiful?
Here is a detailed document of results for that particular race and I also found this LinkedIn post with a detailed report that shows that he had to fight hard for that podium. Fair warning: this post is from a rival's point of view, so you'll see phrases like "Unfortunately, Vowles emerged first".
Unfortunately (but actually sadly, in this case), this was all I could find about his early racing career. However, I am fairly certain that is all there is to find. And that is because of his own recollection on his instagram page. No, not this one. This one.
JV motorsports
According to Instagram, JV joined the app with his @jv.f1 account in November 2017. Interestingly, the first time he posted on that account was six years later: November 2023. However, in the meantime (specifically, in November 2021), he created the @jv.motorsports account dedicated to his racing. After its creation he quickly dumped pictures of all his racing experience on the page and then didn't touch it until preparations for the Asian Le Mans Series started.
I say "dumped" because, unfortunately, while the types of cars are precisely stated, there is little to no information attached to the pictures about their origin, e.g. time, place and whether he drove them in a race, test, or some other context. However, they do appear to be in chronological order, so I could check it against the races I presented here. From what I can tell, other than the three events above, he only participated in testing and "just for fun" driving of specific cars. Therefore, to the best of my knowledge, he only participated in those three championships before 2022 - the year he took it to the next level.
Asian Le Mans Series 2022
The Asian Le Mans Series (ALMS) is an endurance racing series of three classes of cars: LMP2, LMP3 and GT, with four-hour races that include two driver switches (i.e. three drivers in total). In 2022, there were four races: two on the Dubai Autodrome and two more on the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi. (I know, not exactly what you had in mind when you read the word "Asian" but those were different years.) JV raced in the #59 car of the Garage 59 team alongside Danish racing driver Nicolai Kjærgaard and Manuel Maldonado, cousin of former Formula One driver Pastor Maldonado.
According to this article, Garage 59 called him after a successful test in Barcelona, and they wanted a test day in Silverstone while he was also actively preparing for the 2022 F1 season.
“I basically turned up from work in a suit and shoes, took them off, got into a race suit, went out, did about six laps or so of Silverstone, just to make sure the car was okay, and then got back out, put my suit on, and went back to work!”
“I was trying to combine lives, and it’s not easy doing that. You’re racing against individuals whose whole year is [focused on] racing those cars. But I quite like putting myself into difficult situations."
Unlike the other series I reported on in this post, the ALMS is very well known, and both the championship and JV's involvement in it are widely covered. Even before the first race, there were small articles about him entering and how interesting it is that an F1 chief of strategy does actual racing, with most adding some sort of joke along the lines of "Should Lewis Hamilton not work out for Mercedes... wink-wink". My favourite one is the driver lineup announcement from the Garage 59 team's website, where, other than his F1 role, they also mention that the timing of this particular racing series is suitable for someone working in F1: all races happen at the beginning of the year before the F1 season starts.
The post also includes Garage 59 team principal's words ahead of the season where even though the context was the team as a whole, JV got a special mention: "For sure it will also be handy to have one of F1’s best strategists in the team.”
JV himself was also more open about this series: after three months of silence following his initial Instagram photo dump, he posted a picture with a short but sweet message: "Garage59 Asian Le Man's setup day. Seat fit complete!".
Afterwards, his page nicely details the preparation for the event, captions become more descriptive, and his signature style of providing insights and interesting details starts showing: setup day, testing (for the cars), the popular picture of him standing next to the car door with his Mercedes mask on, the verdict of the first day of testing, FP1 in Dubai with details about the temperature, FP2 with some insights about how different is it driving in the dark, another night picture with some information I wish I had while I was watching the races and trying to spot him: his #59 car has green LED bars on the side of the windscreen unlike the sister car's blue ones; a picture of a discussion which I love joking about, and then the race.
Let me pause here for a couple of paragraphs and explain why I was so keen on listing every post, every piece of insight, and every thought that occurred to me. These posts perfectly illustrate the reason I am so interested in his racing career. Because of his on-track experience, he can understand the F1 drivers' point of view much better.
One of the most overlooked pieces of information among F1 fans is just how little knowledge F1 drivers have about what is going on around them on the track. If you've ever seen a fan arguing that a team should let the driver (who often isn't even sure about his own position, let alone the number of cars in his pit window) decide when to change tyres, you'll know what I mean.
Obviously, any strategist (or other team member) has constant conversations with the drivers, allowing them to understand their situation. However, a person who has actual race experience will know exactly how they feel in certain situations on the track or what exactly goes through their mind at a given point during the race. That is incredibly useful for both a chief strategist and a team principal.
“Here’s what it is... You feel alone in the car, really alone. Your visual of the world is what’s happening 200 metres in front of you and 200 metres behind you, if you’re lucky. So, you’re reliant on a voice, an engineer, to give you insight into the world at all times. I’m not of the skill and calibre anywhere near any of these individuals in the paddock, so I doubted myself. When you’re doing this, you would do. [...] It’s only when you come back in again that you realise, actually, you are in the right place, you do have the ability, and that’s what being a racing driver is. You are so reliant on your belief in yourself that you do need others to provide you that strength, because you’ll lose it at times.”
On the other side, the reason I joke about that particular picture is using his F1 knowledge in his own racing. You see, when the driver and his engineers are looking at data, it is generally the engineers who inform the driver about what it means. In this case, JV, who has 25 years of experience in the pinnacle of motorsport, quite possibly understands the data better than the people around him. Naturally, he describes this situation with more humility:
"I was able to bring something [from my experience in the F1 world] that others weren’t, which was an understanding of the engineering, the data and the strategy as well, to a certain extent."
If you're interested, you can watch the qualification and the races on this YouTube playlist and you can find the results here. I'd also advise the interested reader to check out the team's posts (you have to scroll down a bit for 2022).
If you ask me, I believe he did an impressive job considering how new it all was to him: first time racing a GT car, first live driver switch, first night-time racing, etc. Toto Wolff described his performance with the words "wasn't shit", which is the exact same phrase he messaged (ironically through JV) to George Russell after his first F1 win.
JV himself summarized his experiences in this post, but he also had very detailed explanations on his jv.motorsports Instagram page. I recommend checking it out, not only for the information but also because of the beautiful pictures. He also gave at least one interview about his racing ambitions, which hadn't happened before his ALMS stint - according to him, because he was afraid of how it would look if he promoted it and then couldn't perform well. He also opened up about his self-doubt and how he felt as he was lining up on the grid.
"It all went well, is what I can tell you. But the first time we went out [and drove] the car, it was brand-new to Garage 59… I remember it very vividly. Dubai was a track where we had some problems in the day, so we didn’t get any kilometres under our belt, and the first laps I was doing were in the pitch black at night!
For all those that don’t know, Dubai Autodrome is not Abu Dhabi – there are no lights. We also had the lights [on the car] not actually pointing the right way, so I could really clearly see the right-hand edge of the track and not see the left-hand edge. That’s the baptism of fire I went through. Yet I loved every second of it, absolutely loved every second of it."
For more information on JV's participation in the ALMS, I invite you to check out the links I provided or do your own "research" because I'm certain there are things I've missed.
Testing day with Garage 59 2023
Join me for a hypothetical here. It's October 2023. You're still a rookie team principal of an F1 team that appointed you to bring them back to their former glory. Between reorganizing the staff and dragging the infrastructure into the 21st century, not to mention your very pregnant partner at home, you get a day off. What do you do?
Well, if you're James Vowles, you spend it on track, gaining experience in GT3, GT4 cars and even an F1 car! This time, he wasn't shy about his day with Garage 59 in Snetterton. There's a video with amazing footage as well as a collection of beautiful pictures on the team's website - and by "the team", I mean Williams Racing here because that's how open he was about this experience. A surprising part of the video is when he describes his racing career as "effectively a hobby for me", but I guess he's too humble to call it anything else.
Goodwood 2024
The Goodwood Festival of Speed (FOS) is a motorsport festival featuring many different events, most famously the "Hillclimb" - which sounds like the beginner's level of mountain climbing, but it's actually a branch of motorsport, where the drivers go up a hill by themselves and the best time decides the winner. The event features a huge variety of cars: classic and modern cars, fast and slow cars, well-engineered cars, cybertrucks and even motorbikes. If you're interested in seeing a lot of cool vehicles, that's the place to go. It's definitely on my bucket list.
The participants also include Formula 1 teams, although, for safety reasons, F1 cars are no longer allowed to participate in the race; they can only do "demonstrations". Williams Racing has an amazing heritage program, so they usually demonstrate the Hillclimb with old Williams race cars while also displaying other cars as well as some liveries on show cars in their tent. As the new team principal of the team, JV had the opportunity to participate even in 2023, but back then refused because he felt like he needed to achieve something as team principal before doing something like that. Luckily, in his first year, he managed to bring enough to the team by his standards that when he was asked about the 2024 festival, he agreed.
He was very excited to drive Keke Rosberg’s championship-winning FW08. In an interview, he said
“The Festival of Speed is such a beloved and unique event and gives us the opportunity to celebrate the rich heritage of Williams Racing and motorsport as a whole. It will be a dream come true for me to drive a title-winning heritage Williams F1 car. We can't wait to take on the hill climb and put on a show for the incredible crowds that gather at Goodwood each year."
The team posted pictures of the seat fitting, and he even presented a new helmet design for the occasion. Unfortunately, the official Goodwood video of his hillclimb isn't available anymore, but the team mounted two cameras on the car, and you can watch their footage. There are also photos available from the event (you have to scroll down a bit on the page), and let me just unprofessionally say he looks good in Williams's racing equipment.
After his first run, he was clearly touched as he uncharacteristically struggled to find the words. In a video, he repeated that it was a dream come true for him; he talked about the significance of the car and the beauty of the festival. As for the climb itself, he said, "It's as amazing as you think it would be." adding that it's "an opportunity to celebrate what Williams means to me". There is also a SkySports interview with him which surprisingly isn't geolocked (I assume they just forgot...) with more insights.
This was all I could find out about his experience racing cars. However, that is not the only way to race.
Other ventures
Sim racing
During COVID, engineers from the Mercedes F1 team, including JV, participated in developing a realistic version of the Mercedes-AMG W12 car within iRacing. If you want to know more about that project, I recommend this podcast where he mentions he's been interested in eSports and iRacing "dating back to at least 12-13 years ago" and that the reason that it excites him is that it gives him a very similar thrill to real racing that is much less accessible. Interestingly, he also compares it to the driver-in-the-loop simulation that they do to improve the performance of the real F1 car. Interestingly, when he talks about sim racers, he often uses the "we/us" format.
He pops up in a couple of Williams Esports videos like this one, often saying how he wishes he was better prepared. However, his biggest appearance as a sim racer was during the charity race organized by the team for the Imola flooding victims, which was announced here.
I wish it was still available on the Twitch channel because this event was a blast. I have never watched esports, but I can't imagine it going like this in competitive events. On the stream, the participants of the race from Williams, as well as a commentator, almost constantly talked to each other, bickering, making jokes, answering fans' questions, and at some point, I'm pretty sure there was a vote about whether Alex's or James' house plant is prettier. If you're interested, you can watch the recap.
As for James, it was pointed out during the stream that every time he pushes on a pedal, he stretches himself in his chair - a behaviour that is even visible in the highlights video - which shows that he has less experience than the others in the stream. Despite this, he did really well. Obviously, not as well as the professional drivers (by which I mean the Esports team, because poor Alex Albon was not quite on the top of his game), but he can be really proud of himself.
Motorbikes
Other than four wheels and no wheels (because it is only a simulation), he also has an interest in driving on two wheels. According to this interview, he got his motorbike license at 16, but there's not much known about how much he uses it and how serious he is about racing. He talks about how he went motorbiking together with Lewis Hamilton in this podcast, and even Toto Wolff once shared an anecdote about JV, Lewis and Peter Bonnington eloping to test drive a Yamaha YZF-R1 at Jerez. Here, he reveals that Lewis Hamilton isn't the only seven-time world champion with whom he went motorbiking.
"I went motorbiking on racebikes with [Michael Schumacher] on Paul Ricard. Time of our lives! We both still laugh about it."
Interestingly, the one piece of media that shows him as a motorbike racing driver is a video that I bet you have already seen; you just didn't notice he was in it. Mostly because you were distracted by motorsport superstars Lewis Hamilton and Valentino Rossi... That's right, I am talking about the Ride Swap video where there is a person standing next to Lewis Hamilton in a white overall while Franco Morbidelli gives them advice: James Vowles. I'm assuming the split second we see someone in a white suit speeding on the track is also him, but I can't be sure.
...Aaaand that's it. That was all I could find about James Vowles as a racing driver.
Acknowledgements and final remarks
I'd like to express my gratitude to Kristina, who proved incredibly resourceful and efficient in providing sources. I would also like to thank my brother for helping me with this blog and accompanying me on many F1 adventures - the next one is coming up around March, and I'm hoping to write a kick-ass blog post about it.
As for other upcoming posts, I'm planning something specifically for the new Williams fans and a lighthearted and fun one for the general F1 fans. I also have other ideas in mind, but I don't want to jinx anything.
Finally, I'd like to revisit the problem of all this information being hard to find and often ambiguous and ask the reader that if you find anything that is missing, incorrect, or presented in a way that may cause misunderstanding, then please contact me - I'm on both X and BlueSky, or you can contact me through this website - and I'll update the post.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this! I hope you found it informative and maybe even enjoyable!
Rebus T. Farkas
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