In 2023, Dorilton installed James Vowles, the former motorsport strategy director at Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team, as Williams’ team principal. And the Atlassian partnership, according to Vowles, is another big step in his mission to revive Williams’ fortunes on the track.
“We are trying to build a car that has roughly 20,000 components that all come together in a space of two weeks; I was honest and open about it a year or two ago when I explained we were using Excel spreadsheets to try and track tens of thousands of parts, I found an Excel spreadsheet with 100,000 lines it,” he said.
Software company Atlassian is the new title sponsor of the Williams F1 team.Credit: AP
“Our business epitomises milliseconds … good and bad in the championship is milliseconds, and very frequently you drivers operating within the same milliseconds…so when you are optimising in that world, you need to be absolutely confident that you have the tools and systems that are scraping to that level of detail.”
Atlassian’s software is almost certainly going to play a part in how Williams plays its hand this season, as sweeping regulation changes for 2026 look likely to reshape the F1 pecking order.
Under the new rules, F1 cars will be made lighter and more agile, and they will be running on hybrid engines -half engine and half electric. The engine will also run entirely on sustainable fuels.
These mandated changes allow teams that start the 2025 season poorly the option to abandon development work on their current car and focus all energy on building the best possible car for the 2026 season.
Getting a head start on 2026 is a key focus of Vowles, who recently told British online newspaper The Independent, that on-track performance was not the sole benchmark defining Williams’ future.
“The most important year is 2026. It doesn’t matter where we finish in the championship in 2025. It’s not that I don’t care, I do care. But the on-track performance is not an indicator of the lovely things going on at Williams,” he told The Independent.
Cannon-Brookes said the challenger mindset at Williams was a big drawcard for him, and F1’s global footprint gives Atlassian a platform to demonstrate its software in action.
Williams team principal James Vowles attends the F1 75 Live launch event at the O2 arena in London.Credit: AP
“As a team they (Williams) is on a rebuilding journey, they are very honest and open about this…openness is a big part of the change they need to make,” he told this masthead.
“To be honest, my first introduction other than as a very casual fan at a distance was here’s something that we can do to help and what grew out of those conversations was that this is a global sport.”
“We have a global customer base and we can take customers to show them what we are physically doing as technology partner…to be able to story tell what Atlassian does for a business in a very visceral way,” he added.
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Atlassian is not the first Australian company to align itself with the global appeal of F1. Last year, Melbourne-based payments company Airwallex teamed up with McLaren to run their financial operations. Australian online casino Stake.com also has a multi-year title sponsorship deal with Switzerland-based Sauber Motorsport.
But Cannon-Brookes says the Williams partnership is more involved, given how embedded Atlassian’s collaboration software will be to Williams’ future on and off the racetrack.
“This is a team of 1200 people that are trying to win races, not one man in a car driving around that’s going to win by themselves … it’s the ultimate example of teamwork that combines technology teams with business teams.”
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