Rowland “surprised” by Williams integration

Oliver Rowland says he was surprised with how Williams “have taken me in” after joining the Formula 1 squad as its official young driver as he still holds hopes of breaking into the sport.

The 25-year-old was named as Williams official young driver in F1 despite being older than both of its full-time drivers Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin, while the British driver is also gearing up for a full rookie campaign in the World Endurance Championship with the Manor-run CEFC TRSM Racing Ginetta squad in the LMP1 class for the 2018-19 season.

Rowland, who is set to take part in the Barcelona in-season F1 test for Williams immediately after the Spanish Grand Prix, is relishing his opportunity with the iconic team aiming to help develop its FW41 after a tricky start to 2018 and has been stunned by the speedy integration into the set-up.

“It’s nice to work with a team like Williams and move on from F2 and given a chance with an F1 team. I’m really surprised with how they’ve taken me in,” Rowland told Crash.net. “They’ve looked after me and I’m helping them with my feedback.

“They are really taking it onboard and integrating me within the team. Obviously I’ll be testing in Barcelona in a couple of weeks so they’ve really prepared me well for it. It’s been really nice and a big thanks to them.”

Rowland, who had been part of the junior driver programme at Renault until the end of 2017, says his switch to Williams was motivated by keeping his dreams of reaching F1 alive after struggling to break the ranks at the French manufacturer.

Rowland clinched the 2015 Formula Renault 3.5 Series titles, the final year before Renault withdrew its backing, before spending two years in the GP2 Series/Formula 2 which culminated in third place in the 2017 F2 drivers’ championship.

“Renault is pretty closed for the next few years from what I understand and from what I was told at the end of last year,” he said. “I had an option to stay there with what I was doing but there was nothing to go from that moving forwards.

“I didn’t just want to be a development and sim driver I wanted to try and make it into F1, as difficult as that may be, I didn’t want to close the option. That was the real motivation for me and Williams were keen to have me.”

Additional reporting by Haydn Cobb