“I have had the pleasure of winning races and being part of the race bay element, winning a championship and being in the race bay. I promise you, the emotional reaction to this was the largest I’ve ever seen in my Formula 1 career,” Vowles explained.
“It was extraordinary – the shouting, screaming. Carlos did a piece to camera that was fundamentally maybe a minute and a half – they missed the first minute, there was just screaming ongoing in that period of time, and that alone told me what it meant to every one of those individuals in there.
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“And then what I’ve done after that is just follow it up by just walking around really and asking people what it means. The answer is what I hoped it would be, which is [that] it’s a statement of intent.
“It’s a very clear statement of intent; there’s no doubt now that we are investing at the right level, that we have in my opinion one of – if not the best – driver line-ups on the grid, as a combination between the two [Sainz and Alex Albon]. There’s no politics, they’re both just performance machines.”
Another factor that Vowles believes was influential in the Williams squad’s response to Sainz joining was that he believes the team themselves will now have to improve their own performance in order to match that of the 29-year-old.
