When Williams celebrated Carlos Sainz’s podium finish at last month’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the result meant far more than gaining a trophy.
It was the first full-length grand prix in which Williams had scored a podium finish since 2017 – a long wait for a team that had dominated F1 through several eras. It also served as a huge landmark in its revival after years of underinvestment, which left it slumping. In 2019, it was adrift from the rest of the field, struggling to keep up at the back.
But in 2020, the acquisition of the team by Dorilton Capital, an American private investment firm, helped breathe fresh life into Williams. As tough as the decision was for the Williams family to sell, the move secured the team’s future.
In a rare media interview, Dorilton chairman Matthew Savage told The Athletic that the group was always clear that there would be no quick turnaround. But it was ready to make that commitment.
“We wanted to stay the course, really invest behind the name, bring it back to the front of the grid,” Savage said. “Everybody says that. But we were under no illusions.”
In five years, Dorilton has taken Williams to the top of F1’s midfield, and the team is still only viewing this as the start of its return to the good times.
“We’ve come from a long way back, and we’re nowhere near finished on that journey,” James Vowles, Williams’ team principal, told The Athletic. “We’re here to win.”
The idea of Williams targeting wins, scoring a podium finish on merit, or even signing a driver from Ferrari as it did with Sainz would’ve seemed far-fetched five years ago. In 2020, it was bound for its third straight year finishing at the bottom of the constructors’ championship, and Williams failed to score a single point that season.
The deal was worth an estimated $200million in 2020, but Savage knew it was going to take a far greater investment for Williams to truly become competitive. He reckoned teams like Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari were spending as much as five times Williams’ yearly budget of around $150million. This was before F1’s first cost cap being enforced in 2021, which capped spending at $145million (in 2025, it is $135million).
A spending limit was critical to Dorilton investing, but it was also going to take time to catch up with the bigger outfits’ facilities and infrastructure. “You’re dealing with a fixed budget, and you have to make sure that each dollar or pound you spend is the most effective way to spend that money,” Savage said. “And so at the outset, we plotted out some of the fundamental things that we had to build on.”
Changes such as introducing proper accounting software and ditching a giant Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to log the initial car build each year – a wildly outdated and inefficient model – were critical.
Vowles’ appointment in January 2023 was a major moment in Williams’ Dorilton era. Vowles had first engaged with Savage and fellow board member James Matthews while he worked at Mercedes. There, Vowles was the main liaison with Williams, which was linked as an engine customer and had Mercedes junior George Russell as part of its driver line-up.
Vowles recalled thinking Savage and Matthews were “incredibly intelligent individuals, but (they) did not understand F1 either at the same time. They were aware of that, and they up-skilled themselves massively on that journey very quickly.”
Savage was under no illusions. “I really don’t want to play fantasy F1,” he said. “I want to let the experts make the decisions.” That became clear after Claire Williams – founder Frank Williams’ daughter and long-time squad leader – opted to step down as Williams team boss one month after the sale.
Then, a member of staff came to Savage and asked if the team should buy its gearboxes from McLaren instead of Mercedes. “This is my second week, and it came to me! With no analysis, no backup, ‘it’s X million pounds,’” Savage said. “I said, ‘Well, guys, I’ve been in this two weeks! Respectfully, maybe you can go and do some analysis around whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing? Then come back to me.’”
What struck Savage about Vowles was his clear vision of what it took to win in modern-day F1, given his experience as part of Mercedes’ title-winning machine through the 2010s and early 2020s. But also his personal skills.
“He’s very aspirational, very competitive,” Savage said. “He has been instrumental in being able to convey our vision to the F1 world as a whole, which has been instrumental in attracting some high-quality people. He’s been tremendous.”
Vowles began to truly understand Dorilton’s ambition when talks intensified about moving into the Williams team principal role at the end of 2022. He was blunt in outlining what he’d need to turn Williams around.
“The numbers I put on the table were enormous,” he said. Within a week of joining, he’d identified the need for major infrastructure upgrades – a new driver-in-loop simulator, costing over $13million. It was quickly signed off. Dorilton knew it was needed if the team were to be a serious contender and that approach has not wavered.
“Every penny I’ve asked for, they’ve provided,” Vowles said.
It’s unusual for him to go a day without speaking to either Savage or Matthews, the small board composition allowing decisions to be made quickly. “We have to justify it. It’s not you turn up and go, ‘10 mil over here please!’ I’ve learned a lot about how to operate more business in the way that they’re used to,” Vowles said. “But as long as it’s presented correctly, everything I’ve asked for has been provided.”
Savage revealed Dorilton did consider an alternative approach – adopting a B-team route as a “fallback” if team valuations didn’t go up. He called it “more of a Haas-type model” by taking more customer parts and having a smaller workforce.
Matthew Savage at the 2025 United States GP in Austin, Texas (Kym Illman/Getty Images)
Dorilton could also very easily have called it quits early in its F1 adventure by flipping the team for a tidy profit after getting in just before the sport’s boom in popularity. The cost cap addition in 2021 also helped improve team worth considerably, as it gave investors extra incentives by balancing certain areas of team performance.
“We could have made a nice turn if I wanted to flip it,” Savage said. “But I just felt that there was much more to go at that point.”
F1 team valuations have continued to spiral upward. McLaren’s recent minority stake sale put the team’s valuation at more than $4billion, while Aston Martin was valued at $3.2billion in the summer. “I know that there’s a midfield team that received an offer in the low $2billions,” Savage said. “I think that’s the floor now.”
Selling for more than $2billion on a $200million investment would be an exceptional return that would please any investor, and interest in buying Williams is there. Savage said he gets “probably two enquiries a week, in terms of investing in the team or buying the team.”
But he is clear that Dorilton has zero intention of leaving. “I don’t take those inquiries forward,” Savage said. “Equally, we don’t have a time horizon for exit. The intention is to hold this for the long-term and (retain) 100 percent ownership.”
The investment by Dorilton also stretches beyond Williams’ race team. It has established a STEM program for students aged eight to 18, funding classes for schools to attend at the team’s factory. Over 12,500 students will take part in the program this year in a bid to generate greater interest in STEM careers, be it in F1 or otherwise.
Vowles claims this is further proof of the commitment Dorilton is making to both Williams and F1. “This is a minimum 10 or 15-year program,” he said. “This is what I mean. This is not the normal investment you would think it is.”
But perhaps the greatest shift for Williams under Dorilton has been its perception throughout the F1 paddock.
It’s gone from being a team that, through 2019, seemed just to make up the numbers, to one that is now on course for a top-five finish in the constructors’ championship, as Williams sits 30 points clear of P6 with six rounds remaining in the 2025 season.
As well as Sainz’s podium in Baku, Alex Albon has been a consistent points scorer this year, bringing in over two-thirds of Williams’s haul.
“Carlos became available, and we absolutely saw the value of what he could bring to the team,” Savage said. “He’s paid that back in spades. (In) his ability to give feedback on the car, he has absolutely given us a lap time this year, just by comments and observations. It’s tremendously exciting that we can attract someone like Carlos (who was replaced at Ferrari by Lewis Hamilton for 2025).”
Savage also felt other paddock personnel wanted to join the team upon seeing how it was progressing. “You start to see the results, and then you start to see belief,” he said. “It’s like a flywheel. Once it gets going, hopefully it just keeps going.”
That flywheel is now spinning Williams into 2026, long identified as being the moment where it can make a big step forward as F1’s car design regulations change.
The team still will be racing with engines from Mercedes, which dominated after the last change in F1’s engine rules, and it can fully deploy all its recent rebuilding effort. Savage said he went as far as telling Vowles when he joined that he’d be content with the team finishing last in the first three years from 2023, “as long as we got ’26 right.” Starting the new regulation cycle on the right foot is therefore critical.
But when reflecting on Dorilton’s first five years of stewardship of one of the most beloved and respected institutions in F1, Savage did not wish to leap too far forward. To him, it’s about the team taking another step in 2026, not the final step. In another five years, Savage hopes all the current work being put in will allow Williams and Dorilton to truly reap the rewards of their efforts — and realize their shared, lofty ambitions.
“In a funny way, I’d like us just to focus on what we’re doing and take the next step and improve everywhere, and keep on going,” Savage said. “But I think in five years, we hope to be competitive for podiums and we hope to be competitive for the championship.
“The goal is still the same. We’d like to win a whole Concorde Agreement (of championships, typically a five-year period of the CA legal rules that keep F1 teams bound to race), not just one season. That’s the objective.”
