2019 Williams F1 Team - Mercedes

[Manoah2u]

...
https://twitter.com/adamcooperF1/status ... 4606638080

I thought words failed me before. They do so again. Unbelievable tripe. Other teams must be laughing themselves into a fit.

I refused to believe the situation is so critical, but aparently it really is catastrophic. I have just watched Kubica being asked about testing on the F1 site, and you can clearly see he does not want to make an eye contact directly while replying, looking into all directions during the statement, which clearly shows he is not comfortable.

how could they be comfortable.

they have a car that was late for the show, looked half-baked and was incomplete, had both drivers 'save' the car and stay away from pushing so it will survive for 1,5 week of testing, and then the car couldnt be used anymore because the parts were failing as they were 'worn out'. One driver who is brand new in f1, and the other whom is making a comeback. the team has internal struggles, claire has no idea what she's doing or what's going on, they have financial struggles and their new title sponsor remains to be proven, they had the slowest car last year, and have been the slowest in testing, and have no idea where they are, and the first race is in 2 weeks in melbourne.

as if that's not enough, russell has claimed

the drivers must help to motivate Williams amid its difficult start to the 2019 Formula 1 campaign.

great, so it's now up to the drivers.

some notes from this more

"Obviously the whole team is a bit frustrated and disappointed with how things turned out.

"Everybody is upset about it....

as for Robert

His team-mate Robert Kubica said the amount the drivers could do to help Williams in its plight was limited.

"You are expecting too much from a driver, I think," he said.

the Polish driver was left clearly dissatisfied with how his Friday had unfolded.

"We lost another day today,"

the car's state was far from optimal.

"We had some issues. Unfortunately the car was not representative to what it should be, and this had a big impact on our test"

"All the informations were misleading and difficult to get any information for Australia."
Kubica said that the unproductive final day stemmed from a lack of spare parts.

we did maximum from what we have, but this maximum is not enough

Paddy:

"critical bodywork parts had reached a stage of degradation that meant that we were no longer learning useful information from the car"

this car has become ultimately too tired to continue.

the car is not as its best and this has affected our performance

Must be a nightmare for Kubica and Russell.

[Lotus102]

perhaps go back through the pages and see the links and quote's ive posted, instead of being ignorant.

...williams is comparable [to Force India] as multiple other people have noted too except you.

...you clearly have no view of f1 history [regarding teams folding in-season on the basis of poor on-track performance]

...they [Williams’ finances] literally aren't [sound].

because you have no idea what you're talking about.

I’ve been back through the pages and quite frankly haven’t seen anything that gives any indication of Williams being in the kind of position that would lead to an in-season collapse apart from people voicing opinions. If there is any indication out there, I haven’t seen it. I saw similar predictions last year, none of which came to anything. Most of them seemed to be based on a misapprehension about how the finances of an F1 team work.

Anyway. Williams being comparable to Force India? Sorry, I don’t accept it. There’s one major difference, which is that Williams is listed on the stock exchange, and FI was not. Williams therefore has to be more transparent about its finances, and more risk averse. It can’t just run itself into debt trying to buy performance in the hope that better results will bring money in. Force India was in pretty serious debt and when it went into administration, it was revealed that it had two large loans from its title sponsor to provide some cash flow, which still wasn’t enough. Williams has either been in profit or broken even for the last five years.

My lacking an idea of F1 history...well I wrote for the top UK motor sport titles back in the late 90s and early 2000s, so I have a bit of background in this game. I’m still close to people who are involved in motorsport so pick up the odd bit of knowledge here and there. I’ve been a student of motorsport history since my teens, so I don’t think I’m just pulling this stuff out of my hat. You’re entitled to opine that my opinion is based on faulty interpretation, but with all due respect I don’t think I can be accused of ignorance. Look at the teams that have folded in-season since the mid-90s - most if not all did so because the money ran out. Some of them were actually performing rather well, or showing signs of it. Lotus went under shortly after Johnny Herbert put one fourth on the grid at Monza. Jos Verstappen ran sixth at Argentina the following year in a Simtek, a couple of races before the team pulled out citing sponsors withdrawing from deals. Sauber almost pulled out and had to be bailed out by Merc in 1994 when its main sponsor proved to have no money, and that was a year when Frentzen stuck one third on the grid. If it was performance and not money that led to teams failing to finish seasons we’d have lost McLaren years ago. So no, I don’t think history backs up Williams being likely to collapse before AD.

I think I’ve covered everything. It was basically contradiction and a few ad homs wasn’t it?

Not to say everything is rosy in the garden. It plainly isn’t. Paddy seems to have struggled to get on top of managing the technical side, for whatever reason, even while Claire has kept the financial and sponsorship side healthy. There are lots of rumours flying around but it’s hard to know what to credit - the suggestion that the car was going to be two seconds slower than the FW41 was clearly based on misinterpretation and Chinese Whispers so I take some of the more lurid stuff with a pinch of salt. There’s an issue with manufacturing lead times that clearly needs to be addressed. (They’re not the only team with issues - Racing Point basically ran out of parts too). Mind you, I think if last year someone had offered Williams a situation where they’d have a car that was reasonably predictable and only half a second off the next slowest car, I think they’d have taken it. It’s a position they can improve from.

[munudeges]

I’ve been back through the pages and quite frankly haven’t seen anything that gives any indication of Williams being in the kind of position that would lead to an in-season collapse apart from people voicing opinions.

The collapse is in-progress, and it is painfully obvious to everyone who doesn't have their head in the sand.

If there is any indication out there, I haven’t seen it. I saw similar predictions last year, none of which came to anything.

They finished dead last last year, and had a car that introduced an aerodynamic problem so bad it was undriveable and nigh-on dangerous at times. They quite clearly cannot continue to go on like this.

[Lotus102]

I’ve been back through the pages and quite frankly haven’t seen anything that gives any indication of Williams being in the kind of position that would lead to an in-season collapse apart from people voicing opinions.

The collapse is in-progress, and it is painfully obvious to everyone who doesn't have their head in the sand.

If there is any indication out there, I haven’t seen it. I saw similar predictions last year, none of which came to anything.

They finished dead last last year, and had a car that introduced an aerodynamic problem so bad it was undriveable and nigh-on dangerous at times. They quite clearly cannot continue to go on like this.

What has happened, has happened. Any extrapolation of that is, however, subjective. All the many predictions that Williams would collapse last year, not replace Martini, sack Paddy Lowe or whatever did not turn out to be true (and were never likely, however bad the on-track performance was)

Williams is not alone in any of its problems - it just happens to have suffered from most of them worse than anyone else. I’m sure this has been debated at length already, but Williams’ problems last year related to a fundamental mismatch between wind-tunnel/CFD and reality - which was an area they had historically been very good in, according to Massa better than Ferrari. Force India and McLaren reported similar problems - and McLaren was still saying late into the season that they still had no idea what was causing the irregularity. They were fortunate that the car was basically well balanced so Alonso could drive around its flaws, but they went backwards throughout the year and ended up behind Williams on pace. Force India’s data issues seem to have been of a lesser order but their car was rather conservative and evolved from previous cars so I imagine easier to get a handle on. Williams’ decision to go for a very aggressive design was bold but combined with the data problems (according to Mark Hughes, at least partially because of a new wind-tunnel rolling road surface) hurt particularly because they had less of a baseline. So bad luck and over-ambition.

As for the problems this year, they are conspicuous but not unique. They were obviously running a very aggressive schedule on completing the car in order to maximise design time, and underestimated by a few days the time needed to manufacture the tens of thousands of components. Renault weren’t far off making a similar mistake, and Racing Point were sailing a bit close to the wind as well, but just about managed to get their cars running so didn’t have the humiliating situation of publicly missing part of the test. But let’s not pretend the difference from Williams was that huge. It was a matter of days. And as for the shortage of functioning components, Racing Point had exactly the same problem in the first test, and to an extent in the second, and that’s why its mileage was so low relative to the other teams. But because the scrutiny on Williams was already so high, it looked worse.

I don’t deny it’s disappointing, but the team is coming off the back of a situation where it had to investigate and try to correct huge problems with its car and completely restructure its technical department at the same time as trying to compete in what was probably front-to-back the most closely competed F1 season in history. Expecting them to fix everything in less than a year on only the sixth highest budget in the sport would have been optimistic to say the least.

I must say I came to this site hoping for calmer and more considered discussion than the mess of hatred and ill-informed speculation you tend to get on social media. I suppose that has partially been borne out.

[Giblet]

> claire has no idea what she's doing or what's going on

See, that is just false.

I get you don't think she's the best for the job, but let's not speak in ridiculous absolutes that do nothing to forward discussion.

[Lotus102]

> claire has no idea what she's doing or what's going on

See, that is just false.

I get you don't think she's the best for the job, but let's not speak in ridiculous absolutes that do nothing to forward discussion.

Hear, hear. She gets the direct blame for everything that goes wrong and no credit for anything that goes right. OK, so the last couple of years have been poor results-wise but she was still in charge when the team had its most successful seasons for a decade - was that just a fluke? And she has continued to bring in the sponsorship even when results have been bad. Any idiot can bring in sponsors when things are going well. She isn’t an engineering person like Patrick Head was, so she has to bring in people to manage that side, and brought in Paddy Lowe, which most reasonable commentators felt was a huge coup for a team like Williams. I don’t think anyone could have predicted last year, and I don’t think it’s realistic to expect them to bounce right back.

[paulo_f1]

No, but come on, the evidence is there for all to see that no other teams had any pre season parts problems this year, they all had a really plentiful supply with the very tight build schedules: https://racer.com/2019/03/01/red-bull-h ... sly-crash/

All teams that have missed recent pre season tests have either been in terminal financial trouble, or just so badly run/organised that they needed to fire everyone senior: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/11758 ... orce-india

Oh no, hang on, apparently Force India missed two in 2015, when they planned to miss one, they were then slowest in Melbourne 2015 (other than McLaren Honda who really were in trouble) and they finished the season in 5th... who knew...

[garygph]

[/quote]

must say I came to this site hoping for calmer and more considered discussion than the mess of hatred and ill-informed speculation you tend to get on social media. I suppose that has partially been borne out.
[/quote]

There are some really well informed, intelligent posters here so hang in there it will be worth it. Thank you for giving your opinion in a respectful manner it makes reading these posts so much more pleasant.

[madly]

[..] As for the problems this year, they are conspicuous but not unique. They were obviously running a very aggressive schedule on completing the car in order to maximise design time, and underestimated by a few days the time needed to manufacture the tens of thousands of components. Renault weren’t far off making a similar mistake, and Racing Point were sailing a bit close to the wind as well, but just about managed to get their cars running so didn’t have the humiliating situation of publicly missing part of the test. But let’s not pretend the difference from Williams was that huge. It was a matter of days. And as for the shortage of functioning components, Racing Point had exactly the same problem in the first test, and to an extent in the second, and that’s why its mileage was so low relative to the other teams. But because the scrutiny on Williams was already so high, it looked worse. [..]

First week of testing = filming day + shake down.
Second week of testing = 3 days, 1 day lost due to 'worn car'.

Kubica said - in a 'productive' days drivers mainly worked for an aero guys and he, as a driver, is prepared in 20% in his standards... After first week he said clearly - negative impact of lost days in first week will be for the half season or even more. His longes stint was... 15 laps. No race or qualification simulation. Don't expect miracles.

Only a few days?

[Lotus102]

must say I came to this site hoping for calmer and more considered discussion than the mess of hatred and ill-informed speculation you tend to get on social media. I suppose that has partially been borne out.

There are some really well informed, intelligent posters here so hang in there it will be worth it. Thank you for giving your opinion in a respectful manner it makes reading these posts so much more pleasant.

Thank you. I get the impression most posters are capable of sensible discussion.

Some comments from Paddy Lowe in Autosport about the FW42. Quite plainly pace is lacking at the moment, but I think it's a positive sign that the team has already met one of its objectives, to produce a car that was driveable, and had controllable tyre management. I don't think it's a small matter that a team in the midst of a restructuring set out to achieve those characteristics and has delivered them. (And I don't accept that all F1 teams should be or are doing this already - McLaren switched to an approach like this for 2015 after previously, roughly speaking, simply designing to maximise downforce and then working on other characteristics once that was achieved)

"Robert has a lot more experience of last year's car than George [Russell], who only had a brief run," said Lowe. "Robert has driven the old car around here quite a lot last year and has some very encouraging comments on the qualities of the car. He feels that we've made a huge step forwards in terms of the platform. "A car that is far more driveable, a car that you can work with from a driving point of view, you can control your management of tyre, you can control the balance and pace, was definitely not a description we could have given about last year's car."

He added that a key target was "to design and implement a process within our engineering that would make cars with better properties and then go and deliver those better properties. That is a good step for us, and a much better foundation to move forwards until the next stage."

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/14187 ... p-forwards

[Lotus102]

[..] As for the problems this year, they are conspicuous but not unique. They were obviously running a very aggressive schedule on completing the car in order to maximise design time, and underestimated by a few days the time needed to manufacture the tens of thousands of components. Renault weren’t far off making a similar mistake, and Racing Point were sailing a bit close to the wind as well, but just about managed to get their cars running so didn’t have the humiliating situation of publicly missing part of the test. But let’s not pretend the difference from Williams was that huge. It was a matter of days. And as for the shortage of functioning components, Racing Point had exactly the same problem in the first test, and to an extent in the second, and that’s why its mileage was so low relative to the other teams. But because the scrutiny on Williams was already so high, it looked worse. [..]

First week of testing = filming day + shake down.
Second week of testing = 3 days, 1 day lost due to 'worn car'.

Kubica said - in a 'productive' days drivers mainly worked for an aero guys and he, as a driver, is prepared in 20% in his standards... After first week he said clearly - negative impact of lost days in first week will be for the half season or even more. His longes stint was... 15 laps. No race or qualification simulation. Don't expect miracles.

Only a few days?

Oh, I'm not expecting miracles. In fact I think the people being especially hard on the team seemed to be expecting them, or at least are criticising the team for not producing one.

I dispute your calculations slightly. They lost the filming day shakedown and the first week of testing was effectively a shakedown on the Wednesday and one full day of running on the Thursday so 1.5 days - that's 3.5 days lost overall. They then replaced the filming day between the two tests, so that's 2.5 days lost. They ran a lot more than some of the other teams in the second test (and by the sounds of things, more than they were planning to on those days), so arguably they made up some more time, but it's hard to quantify, so we'll ignore for now. The first half of the last day was fine, they lost the second half for performance running but still got use out of it practising procedures and pit stops. So let's say 0.25 days lost. Overall, they lost no more than 2.75 days. Round up to 3 if you want to be harsh.

Robert was meant to be doing long runs, and as far as I can see he did three stints in the morning separated by pit stops so 15 laps in one go isn't ideal but it's not the end of the world either. It sucks that he doesn't feel prepared but he has a lot more recent F1 running than some of the rookies. I think the priority had to be getting mileage under Russell's belt, although I can understand Kubica might be sore having paid for his seat when Russell isn't paying anything for his.

What was the equivalent days lost to Racing Point and Haas with their low running in Week 1? What was the time lost to teams that had crashes or breakdowns? Only fair to compare like with like. As far as I can see Williams had no mechanical breakdowns and only one minor technical hold-up after lunch on the full day of running in the first test, apart from those life-expired bodywork parts on the last day.

[madly]

Most teams made shake down in a filming day. They started to work hard from the first day of test. In interviews with his friend for polish Eleven Sport TV he stated clearly, they don't know a lot about FW-42 and he was very upset and angry. It's very difficult to work on the car basis in friday or saturday sessions and it was very important to have 'smooth start' to get back from back of the grid. Let's hope car will have potential.

[Lotus102]

Most teams made shake down in a filming day. They started to work hard from the first day of test. In interviews with his friend for polish Eleven Sport TV he stated clearly, they don't know a lot about FW-42 and he was very upset and angry. It's very difficult to work on the car basis in friday or saturday sessions and it was very important to have 'smooth start' to get back from back of the grid. Let's hope car will have potential.

Most but not all.

I saw this trait from Kubica last year, that he was not slow to say very negative things about the team to the Polish media, while being a bit more diplomatic to the English language media. While the race drivers, less so Stroll perhaps, would be honest about shortcomings but keep it constructive, Kubica would be suggesting things like the team weren’t listening to the drivers. It’s not terribly professional and I can’t imagine his engineers are best pleased with him. For example, saying that the whole last day was lost when other sources from the team were saying the morning was OK - naturally what gets reported most widely is that Kubica says the whole day was lost. Maybe as far as he was concerned it was, but the team got a lot of value from it. After last year he ought to recognise the benefit of the aero work.

I hope things improve so that it ceases to be an issue, but for one of the drivers to be dropping the team in the soup every time things don’t go so well is not going to help morale.

[Zynerji]

Williams was 2 days late with its new car and gets this kind of attention, but Racing Point runs a modified 2018 car both weeks of the test proving the new car didn't even exist as a product, and it's no big deal...

Sometimes I wonder why the venom is so caustic here.

[Maplesoup]

Williams was 2 days late with its new car and gets this kind of attention, but Racing Point runs a modified 2018 car both weeks of the test proving the new car didn't even exist as a product, and it's no big deal...

Sometimes I wonder why the venom is so caustic here.

Big difference, Racing Point always try and get multiple years of use from a chassis design to keep costs low. Williams had a fundamental issue with their previous chassis and as such needed to change it, so racing an modified 2018 car probably would of been useless.