Williams ‘at odds’ with Alpine over gardening leave periods with double dig landed

James Vowles on the Williams pit wall

Williams are at odds with Alpine over the gardening leave period for new Head of Performance Systems, Richard Frith, and James Vowles believes that’s because of the number of Alpine personnel switching to the Grove team.

Williams announced last month they’d bolstered their technical structure with 26 new recruits, including Alpine’s former Technical Director Matt Harman.

Williams team boss: With how many people we took from Alpine…

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Working together with another former Alpine team member, Pat Fry, who is Williams’ Chief Technical Officer as of last November, Vowles and Fry announced an influx of no fewer than 26 personnel joining from Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and Alpine.

But while the likes of new Design Director Harman will don the blue-and-white when F1 returns to racing after the summer break having already left Alpine earlier this year, Williams and the Enstone team are haggling over Frith’s gardening leave.

“We have Richard Frith, who comes from Alpine,” Vowles told the media including PlanetF1.com. “He’ll be joining us at an unknown date in ’25, which is for us to negotiate at the moment.

“We’re still slightly at odds with them with how many people we took from Alpine, if I’m truthful here.

“I can’t wait for him to join in and then you can put an x in here month’s time. Let’s see what that comes down to.”

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Vowles believes Williams’ spate of big-name signings, which now includes Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz who will partner Alex Albon next season, shows that this is a team that’s willing to investing in its personnel.

It’s a campaign that Vowles started last year already when the then-new team boss signed Fry from Alpine as their new Chief Technical Officer.

Vowles was quick to point out in his conversation with the media that Fry left Alpine before “it went downhill”.

“We have Pat, who left Alpine before it went downhill,” he said. “Pat, who signed here actually around about March or April last year. And he very much believes in what we’re doing and is a key part of what we’re doing at the same time.

“And in following on from Pat, we made that release just a few weeks ago with 26 new hires.

“And I didn’t know where to draw the cut-off because if I’ve done it a week later it would’ve been in the 30s already with a number of good individuals but we had to choose a point in time where we thought it was sensible to discuss that.

“It’s not that we’ve hired just 26 people, we’ve hired close to 250 across the last 17 months. That is those are key senior hires from other F1 teams that will make a direct impact from the moment they join and that’s quite an important differential.

“But that’s the people investment that we’re going down a moment. Between them they had over 100 years’ experience in the sport and as I said there’s a lot more to come. We’ll just find the right point where it’s a high enough number that I think I can release it to the world and be there.”

“That’s Williams as it is today,” he added. “And that’s not the end of our journey by any stretch of the imagination. That’s the growth we’re on.

“Now you don’t do that by coincidence, you do that because people believe in what you’re doing, people are coming from, as I said, all the top teams, there’s not really one place that we’re, not getting good impact in.

“People are doing it because they see that Williams isn’t there just to make up the numbers anymore. It’s an investment in property, bringing this team back to the front, and it’s a journey.”

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