James Vowles has revealed the amusing advice he received from Mꦺercede💧s boss Toto Wolff prior to taking on his new F1 role with Williams.

Vowles, a central figure at Mercedes as the head of strategy during their period of dominance of F1 from 2014 to 2021, was app♑ointed Williams’ new team principal ahead of the 2023 season.

The 44-year-old B💃riton left Mercedes with Wolff’s blessing and enjoyed a successful first campaign at Williams, leading the team to se♕venth place in the constructors’ championship.

Opening up about the guidance Wolff offered him before joining Williams, Vowles told the High Performance podcast: “I think he said ‘don’t be s**t’ wasไ his advice! Which I’m trying to do!

“Other than that, he knows that I’ve been forming for this for quite a wh🌊ile, so there was little h🐻e could provide for me above it.

“Even today, I wಌould say Fred [Vasseur, Ferrari Team Principal] and Otmar [Szafnaeur] before he left and a few others were guiജding voices. I can happily call them, even though they are adversaries, not ask for advice but they can give me guidance.”

Vowles ꧋added: “Toto was kind enough with his time to give me as much experien🌌ce as he could, he knew where he was forming me towards.

“It doesn’t mean that I had a job withi🍌n Mercedes to be Team Principal there, but he provided me his time and knowledge and experience and more responsibilities.

“That started happening, so simulator drivers, then race drivers, start to come beneath me and I started working🧸 with our Formula E outfit, GT3 team, elements of the cost cap and other bits. I just kept pulling it in.

“Of course you can’t do it all at once, so what I did was built a team that did all the strat🌳egy bits for me so I could focus on the growth.

“Once you’ve based yourself out of engineering and focused on how the company🐷 runs, you have a better idea of how to step into this role.”

Vowles led Williams to a seventh-place finish in the 2023 constructors’ championship, a significant ste🐼p after they were bottom of the pile a year earlier.

Their star driver Alex Albon, whose F1 career was once in jeopardy after he left Red Bull, has huge♒ly impressed and is the subject of admiring glances from the biggest teams on the grid.