(Motorsports news) In FP1, Zak O’Sullivan will drive an FW45, while Franco Colapinto will share driving duties with his fellow F3 graduate in next week’s young driver test. Sir Frank Williams had a warm heart for newcomers. Consider this: David Coulthard, Jacques Villeneuve, Jenson Button, Juan Pablo Montoya, Nico Rosberg, Nico Hulkenberg, Pastor Maldonado, Valtteri Bottas, Lance Stroll, and George Russell all had their F1 race debuts with the team.

The Williams Driver Academy was established to formalize the process of bringing young drivers through the ranks, and it was the funnel that brought Nicholas Latifi and Logan Sargeant into F1. When James Vowles joined the team as team principal at the beginning of this year, the program was only going to get stronger. At Mercedes, one of his key responsibilities was to nurture newcomers, so he has an excellent awareness of the junior categories as well as a network of contacts across teams and managers.

In terms of potential, Williams now boasts a lineup that rivals that of Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari, and others. “First of all, as Williams, but also for me, it’s tremendously important to be investing in our young driver programme,” Vowles said in an interview. “We have an active young driver program, and I think Williams has been very good at bringing young drivers through it for probably the last 20 years on and off.”

“Obviously, my connection was made directly through George here a few years ago.” And the outcomes can be really beneficial.” This year, O’Sullivan and Colapinto were joined in F3 by Luke Browning and Oliver Gray, bringing the Williams team to four drivers. The first two were the major standouts, with both drivers winning races and finishing second and fourth in the championship, respectively. Even for an FP1 session, the jump from F3 to F1 is significant, and there were no guarantees that any of them would be eligible for the practice superlicence required to race in Abu Dhabi.

“There were options to put in others that weren’t in the driver programme,” Vowles said. “But we were very focused on ensuring that we put our own in the car and not others, because that’s the investment we’re making. In terms of Zak, while he comes from F3, he has previously driven an F1 car.” He received a positive outcome from the Aston Martin BRDC Autosport Award. And to participate in this event, you must drive 300 kilometers in an F1 car. It was an Alpine, not a Williams F1 car.” Lawrence Stroll poured massive sums into a test program in an old Williams in 2016, which saw his son Lance sample a massive number of tracks all over the world.

The crew has recently been unable to maintain a two-year-old car operating for young driver testing, but Alpine sees this as a valuable commercial initiative. Third parties frequently rent out its car, whether they are F2 drivers with a lot of backing and little chance of earning a test on merit, or rival teams like Williams, who need to offer someone mileage. “It’s a strange situation,” Vowles concedes. “It stems from the fact that, for many years, Williams was very focused on simply getting a car racing, rather than what I would call ‘nice to haves.'”

“Having a test team is also beneficial. Alpine is quite accommodating. We’ve been working with them on this for quite some time.”

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