[ 2020 ] Williams F1 Team - Mercedes

[Lotus102]

yes he's a quiet person isn't he, more than 'a leader', and being in the right role is a thing all through F1 really, same with Aldo Costa and perhaps Lorenzo Sassi, and getting that right has been a big difference for Mercedes. Hopefully Claire has been learning and it's going to come right now, with the technical group

I hope so. I think Claire was definitely lulled into a sense of false security, where two of her early big decisions - sack Mike Coughlan for Pat Symonds, and ditch Renault for Mercedes - paid massive dividends almost immediately, and it was also apparent that getting rid of a lot of the 'trick' concepts like exhaust blowing/Coanda effect that Williams had never really mastered, kind of brought everyone else back to where Williams was rather than the other way round. Still, I'm firmly of the opinion that 2014-15 was not just a fluke and was not only attributable to Merc engines. The FW36 was a damn good car, with great high speed stability, and majoring on the low drag concept allowed the design team to focus their efforts on areas that would gain the greatest results. But even so, it probably looked easier than it actually should have done.

I'm really keen to see how things have actually improved. I mean, it looks like night and day over last year, but only time will tell if they've actually got on top of all the issues.

[izzy]

yes he's a quiet person isn't he, more than 'a leader', and being in the right role is a thing all through F1 really, same with Aldo Costa and perhaps Lorenzo Sassi, and getting that right has been a big difference for Mercedes. Hopefully Claire has been learning and it's going to come right now, with the technical group

I'm really keen to see how things have actually improved. I mean, it looks like night and day over last year, but only time will tell if they've actually got on top of all the issues.

yes i mean this year, their long run stints didn't look great tbh, my hopes have dropped off a bit, but if they've got their tools and correlation together they can develop. Then for next year i'm waiting to see how the prize pie gets divided up as i think they really need it to be equal. And also it sounds like there's less scope for teams to actually design the car so that could close them up even if they're still tight for funding

[Lotus102]

yes i mean this year, their long run stints didn't look great tbh, my hopes have dropped off a bit, but if they've got their tools and correlation together they can develop. Then for next year i'm waiting to see how the prize pie gets divided up as i think they really need it to be equal. And also it sounds like there's less scope for teams to actually design the car so that could close them up even if they're still tight for funding

Where's the info on long run pace? I have heard that, just would be interested to see what the source is. IIRC George said yesterday something about long run pace looking OK, so am hopeful it won't be that bad. Maybe it'll take a bit of in-season development to get in the mix. It's not unheard of, and back in 2014-15 Williams' in-season development was the best in the midfield. Just got to hope that the improved processes, planning, manufacturing etc, tell.

[tomazy]

I think this is Russells race simulation on the last day of testing. It is a bit srange, I think he got a small problem at the end of the first stint, as he was in the pits for 11min and then did 1 lap on soft tires, streight back to the pits on hards and then did 2 hard stints below.

Out C3 tire
1:23.697
1:23.27
1:23.546
1:24.158
1:24.096
1:23.958
1:23.806
1:24.213
1:24.357
1:24.832
1:25.452
1:24.992
1:24.743
1:24.895
1:25.682
1:25.361
1:25.775
in

out C4 tire
1:24.298
1:23.992
1:24.304
1:23.746
1:24.067
1:24.469
1:25.563
1:23.585
1:23.52
1:24.019
1:23.824
1:23.735
1:23.419
1:23.513
1:23.823
1:24.105
1:24.565
in

out C4 tire
1:22.382
1:22.438
1:22.391
1:22.409
1:22.755
1:22.363
1:22.558
1:22.734
1:22.537
1:22.299
1:22.477
1:22.924
1:22.624
1:22.479
1:22.646
1:22.977
1:22.746
1:22.699
1:23.057
1:22.797
in

[izzy]

yes i mean this year, their long run stints didn't look great tbh, my hopes have dropped off a bit, but if they've got their tools and correlation together they can develop. Then for next year i'm waiting to see how the prize pie gets divided up as i think they really need it to be equal. And also it sounds like there's less scope for teams to actually design the car so that could close them up even if they're still tight for funding

Where's the info on long run pace? I have heard that, just would be interested to see what the source is. IIRC George said yesterday something about long run pace looking OK, so am hopeful it won't be that bad. Maybe it'll take a bit of in-season development to get in the mix. It's not unheard of, and back in 2014-15 Williams' in-season development was the best in the midfield. Just got to hope that the improved processes, planning, manufacturing etc, tell.

it's @F1debrief. George's C2 stint on Day6 wasn't labelled as a race sim, so it could've been a first stint, but the others were all faster, on C2 2nd stint. These numbers are in columns (honestly! best i could do), the top row is the average, in bold. It looks like a different run from what @tomazy's posted, which averages 1:24.0
[*]Russell (C2) Kvyat #AT01 Perez #RP20 Sainz #MCL35 Grosjean #VF20 Leclerc #SF1000
24.46 23.35 23.12 23.10 22.42 21.88
out 50.074 (C2) 43.962 (C2) 59.206 (C2) 59.672 (C2) 45.280 (C2)
24.818 22.728 22.069 22.844 22.236 21.643
24.325 22.994 22.275 22.677 21.946 21.76
23.818 22.873 22.427 22.612 22.173 21.69
24.079 22.955 22.831 22.483 21.934 21.798
23.761 22.893 22.661 22.33 21.977 21.284
24.324 22.863 22.714 22.393 22.017 21.696
24.396 23.196 22.931 22.449 22.065 21.932
24.496 23.652 23.165 22.668 22.038 21.747
24.328 24.352 22.91 26.918 22.27 21.734
24.394 23.515 23.075 22.865 22.459 21.767
24.769 23.56 23.203 23.701 22.639 21.862
24.849 23.643 23.35 23.277 22.832 22.328
24.62 23.668 23.545 23.534 22.945 22.328
24.372 23.341 23.511 22.617 23.213 22.228
23.368 23.268 23.899 22.963 23.002 22.255
24.703 23.68 23.895 23.261 22.9 22.675
24.816 23.708 23.666 23.098 box 21.386
25.183 23.498 23.516 23.086 21.702
25.342 23.318 23.686 23.204 21.917
in 23.414 23.479 22.983 21.873
box 23.624 22.789 22.59
23.884 22.888 box
box box

[bill shoe]

Yea, Paddy had to go. It was clear the team was not putting any real effort in for him. The scary thought is that it's conceivable that "everyone else" at Williams was to blame rather than Paddy. But it's not practical to fire an entire recalcitrant team, so by definition Paddy had to go.

Is it clear? I don’t see that at all. We’ll see, I suppose. If Williams genuinely has taken a big step forward this year, as it seems to have done, then we’ll know that it is capable of changing, and Paddy was part more like of the problem rather than the solution. If things are as bad as last year, then that wasn’t it.

I figure some significant people in the rank & file were not supporting Paddy because (1) there was no clear information about why parts were late at beginning of 2019 (Paddy was still responsible regardless, but weird that the entire organization "knew nothing"), (2) the barge-board area for the first several races of 2019 was spectacularly plain, uncreative, and outlier crude. I see these as clues that Paddy was being hung out to dry by a team that didn’t support him.

I don't have any insider info on what happened or who's at fault, but I can still comment on the divide.

[netoperek]

Yea, Paddy had to go. It was clear the team was not putting any real effort in for him. The scary thought is that it's conceivable that "everyone else" at Williams was to blame rather than Paddy. But it's not practical to fire an entire recalcitrant team, so by definition Paddy had to go.

Is it clear? I don’t see that at all. We’ll see, I suppose. If Williams genuinely has taken a big step forward this year, as it seems to have done, then we’ll know that it is capable of changing, and Paddy was part more like of the problem rather than the solution. If things are as bad as last year, then that wasn’t it.

I figure some significant people in the rank & file were not supporting Paddy because (1) there was no clear information about why parts were late at beginning of 2019 (Paddy was still responsible regardless, but weird that the entire organization "knew nothing"), (2) the barge-board area for the first several races of 2019 was spectacularly plain, uncreative, and outlier crude. I see these as clues that Paddy was being hung out to dry by a team that didn’t support him.

I don't have any insider info on what happened or who's at fault, but I can still comment on the divide.

My gut feeling says that maybe Paddy's initial concept failed spectacularly, hence basic, rushed backup project had to be implemented to minimize the damage. It could have been diagnosed as a failure way too late which resulted in manufacture delays we saw.

[Scorpaguy]

Is it clear? I don’t see that at all. We’ll see, I suppose. If Williams genuinely has taken a big step forward this year, as it seems to have done, then we’ll know that it is capable of changing, and Paddy was part more like of the problem rather than the solution. If things are as bad as last year, then that wasn’t it.

I figure some significant people in the rank & file were not supporting Paddy because (1) there was no clear information about why parts were late at beginning of 2019 (Paddy was still responsible regardless, but weird that the entire organization "knew nothing"), (2) the barge-board area for the first several races of 2019 was spectacularly plain, uncreative, and outlier crude. I see these as clues that Paddy was being hung out to dry by a team that didn’t support him.

I don't have any insider info on what happened or who's at fault, but I can still comment on the divide.

My gut feeling says that maybe Paddy's initial concept failed spectacularly, hence basic, rushed backup project had to be implemented to minimize the damage. It could have been diagnosed as a failure way too late which resulted in manufacture delays we saw.

Sorry folks, but this whole Paddy thing still keeps me up at night....chewing goose feathers and repeatedly yelling "WTF!" in a tourettes-type fashion. While what could/should have been great chemistry that did not materialize is flummoxing enough...what drives my insomnia is the fact that to this day we have nothing but innuendo, rumor, and speculation as to what the hell happened. One would think the two principal's implicated in this fiasco would have egos too big to remain silent.

Was it CW's fault and the gardening leave check so big that PL cares not about his rep??? -or- Was it PL's fault and his incompetence so blatant that CW cannot expound on such for revealing her own blindness?

OR...ocams razor - CW's ignorance, William's lack of resources, and PL's overestimation of his own abilities all combined to create one of F1's greatest feces storms?

[Raleigh]

yes he's a quiet person isn't he, more than 'a leader', and being in the right role is a thing all through F1 really, same with Aldo Costa and perhaps Lorenzo Sassi, and getting that right has been a big difference for Mercedes. Hopefully Claire has been learning and it's going to come right now, with the technical group

I hope so. I think Claire was definitely lulled into a sense of false security, where two of her early big decisions - sack Mike Coughlan for Pat Symonds, and ditch Renault for Mercedes - paid massive dividends almost immediately, and it was also apparent that getting rid of a lot of the 'trick' concepts like exhaust blowing/Coanda effect that Williams had never really mastered, kind of brought everyone else back to where Williams was rather than the other way round. Still, I'm firmly of the opinion that 2014-15 was not just a fluke and was not only attributable to Merc engines. The FW36 was a damn good car, with great high speed stability, and majoring on the low drag concept allowed the design team to focus their efforts on areas that would gain the greatest results. But even so, it probably looked easier than it actually should have done.

I'm really keen to see how things have actually improved. I mean, it looks like night and day over last year, but only time will tell if they've actually got on top of all the issues.

Were those decisions really Claire's? People forget how much Toto Wolff was involved with Williams before he moved to Mercedes at the end of 2013 and started selling off his Williams stakeholder position.

My honest opinion is Toto was behind Williams revival and the people left behind squandered Williams' strong position with development missteps and Pat Symonds being forced out even though he was the best leadership Williams had left.

[sprint car76]

If he was all that good why did merc. not renew his contract? Did they even skip a beat when he left? Face it he wasn't that good.

[Lotus102]

OR...ocams razor - CW's ignorance, William's lack of resources, and PL's overestimation of his own abilities all combined to create one of F1's greatest feces storms?

Occam’s razor would be the solution that requires the fewest assumptions, but due to the lack of information it’s hard to categorise what assumptions each explanation requires. Yes, Williams were relatively short on resources compared to other teams, but not dramatically so - e.g. Stroll Snr funding had allowed them to buy a state of the art simulator, at a time when Sauber didn’t have a simulator at all - and had done well with the similar if not smaller levels of resource before. Correlation does not imply causation, but things started really tanking after Lowe joined, and have been picking up after he left.

Were those decisions really Claire's? People forget how much Toto Wolff was involved with Williams before he moved to Mercedes at the end of 2013 and started selling off his Williams stakeholder position.

My honest opinion is Toto was behind Williams revival and the people left behind squandered Williams' strong position with development missteps and Pat Symonds being forced out even though he was the best leadership Williams had left.

Yes, those decisions were Claire’s. Toto left Williams in January or February 2013, not at the end, and she was definitely responsible for sacking Coughlan. I don’t think Toto had anything to do with Williams’ revival at all - in fact he was there throughout the lowest point in the team’s history. He contributed to Claire’s decision to select Mercedes by sharing some performance data with her after he’d gone to Merc - a commercial matter on his part, as obviously it paid for Merc to have customer teams.

[bill shoe]

Were those decisions really Claire's? People forget how much Toto Wolff was involved with Williams before he moved to Mercedes at the end of 2013 and started selling off his Williams stakeholder position.

My honest opinion is Toto was behind Williams revival and the people left behind squandered Williams' strong position with development missteps and Pat Symonds being forced out even though he was the best leadership Williams had left.

Yea as a long-time Williams fan, the "what-if-Toto-had-stayed" issue is what comes closest to keeping me up at night. Almost impossible to image how much better off William would be with him now.

[Lotus102]

Were those decisions really Claire's? People forget how much Toto Wolff was involved with Williams before he moved to Mercedes at the end of 2013 and started selling off his Williams stakeholder position.

My honest opinion is Toto was behind Williams revival and the people left behind squandered Williams' strong position with development missteps and Pat Symonds being forced out even though he was the best leadership Williams had left.

Yea as a long-time Williams fan, the "what-if-Toto-had-stayed" issue is what comes closest to keeping me up at night. Almost impossible to image how much better off William would be with him now.

I don’t get this at all. Look at his actual record there, it was dreadful

I can understand a bit of hindsight given his success at Merc, but he joined in 2009, 2010 was an OK season, 2011 and 2012 were poor apart from the one-off Spanish GP win, and 2013 was dreadful. He left in January 2013. I just don’t understand people attributing a sudden jump in fortunes to his four years there, over a year after he left. And at the time he left, things were getting worse, not better.

[Lotus102]

Many thanks for the stint times izzy and tomazy, much appreciated

[Raleigh]

Were those decisions really Claire's? People forget how much Toto Wolff was involved with Williams before he moved to Mercedes at the end of 2013 and started selling off his Williams stakeholder position.

My honest opinion is Toto was behind Williams revival and the people left behind squandered Williams' strong position with development missteps and Pat Symonds being forced out even though he was the best leadership Williams had left.

Yea as a long-time Williams fan, the "what-if-Toto-had-stayed" issue is what comes closest to keeping me up at night. Almost impossible to image how much better off William would be with him now.

I don’t get this at all. Look at his actual record there, it was dreadful

I can understand a bit of hindsight given his success at Merc, but he joined in 2009, 2010 was an OK season, 2011 and 2012 were poor apart from the one-off Spanish GP win, and 2013 was dreadful. He left in January 2013. I just don’t understand people attributing a sudden jump in fortunes to his four years there, over a year after he left. And at the time he left, things were getting worse, not better.

Toto wasn't leading Williams in 2009, he joined as a shareholder and slowly ramped up involvement to become executive director in 2012, which is still to date the teams last win. And then 2013 was a bit of an unfortunate fluke, the team had a decent car but never really got the hang of the coanda exhaust, they struggled with inconsistent downforce that could drastically change midcorner. Reverting to a conventional exhaust saw the team suddenly leap from backmarkers to solid midfielders, sadly this only happened in the last 2 races of the year.

The Toto Wolff period at Williams was 2012 onwards with an official departure in 2013 but still with a lot of influence in 2014 and some influence through 2015 up until he sold the last shares in 2016.

Don't forget all the talk in 2014 and 2015 about Williams being tailgunners for Mercedes and having a special relationship the other customers did not have.