The Williams F1 Team have today confirmed that Paddy Lowe, its former technical chief will leave the team after having been made inactive several months ago.
This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
Russell hasn’t had much chance to show it this year but despite the hype over Lando he was the best of the three that made it from F2 last year, he beat Norris comfortably and also Albon despite Alex having an extra year in F2 and George being a rookie.
He should beat Latifi with no problem and by a sizeable margin. Nicholas is older, has spent 7 whole seasons in single seaters already and despite always being with top teams has no real achievements to speak of, a handful of wins in his 4th consecutive GP2/F2 season with DAMS in a weak field where even the champion has been passed over for an F1 drive.
At this point Latifi has plenty of experience and no real potential to improve, he’ll do an adequate job and not crash often but he’s not going to challenge Russell.
Next year is going to be extremely important for russell as he auditions for a 2021 seat at merc. Latifi is going to be a tougher teamate than kubica and russell will have to beat him convincingly to cement his chances at merc.
Latifi is going to be a tougher teamate than kubica
good one.
"Explain the ending to F1 in football terms"
"Hamilton was beating Verstappen 7-0, then the ref decided F%$& rules, next goal wins
while also sending off 4 Hamilton players to make it more interesting"
I believe his limited outings in 2019 indicate he will be much closer than Kub.
But unless based on a full race, can we believe it? In practice sessions they are not driving against each other (or against any one really) and it is single lap pace that shows not race craft. I think Russell has good racecraft and among the backmarkers that is what will count.
When arguing with a fool, be sure the other person is not doing the same thing.
Latifi is going to be a tougher teamate than kubica
good one.
He could hardly be less tough. Latifi was at least pretty competitive with the F2 field, actually for several years (won a race and scored several podiums in his second full season) though he went a bit off the boil in 2018, and F2 has proven to be an excellent preparation for F1 as Russell, Albon and Norris have shown. So I see no reason why Latifi shouldn’t be, at the very worst, within half a second of Russell. Kubica had too many GPs where he was over a second behind in quali and often more during the race. It was lucky he was at Williams and not at a mid-grid team which would have really shown up how far off the pace he was. Latifi is at least a known quantity and will be a decent benchmark for Russell.
I can see happy Kubica bashing can go on, while mods are blocking reverse position posts - hopefully this one gets through... Few questions to think about then. If simply Kubica has been such an easy opponent and driver differences relied solely on driver skills and not equipment, how come that Russel had overall worse performance in every scenario where car didn't matter that much, namely first laps and tracks like Monaco. Also, why Robert has been told to lift and coast and turn power modes down each time he was in front of Russel? In such scenarios a gap between WDC material George and such poor driver like Robert should be only bigger, shouldn't it?
Apparently I cannot argue with Lotus claims in response to my own post, that Russel gives a better feedback, because it seems it is violating the rules of this forum. Let me just leave another food for thought in this subject then. What is a probability that a relative newbie will have a better insight than a driver that has been considered as one of the best if not The best in this field prior to his crash and on his path to return to F1 went through so many different experiences with great success too (i.e. WRC2 championship). Finally, if he was that bad, why immediatelly after his statement he won't be continuing with Williams, he got plenty of job offers aiming exactly at these skills?
I wouldn’t call two ‘plenty’. Furthermore, any job offers for Kubica need to be seen in the light of the significant funding from Orlen that will come along with it. It’s rare to get the chance to sign a sponsor who insists on a driver’s presence, but not in a race seat. As I said above, Kubica’s sim work does seem to be reasonably well respected. It’s just that this doesn’t seem to translate to on-track performance any more. Was he seen as the best before his crash? I had the impression Heidfeld had more to do with BMW’s development. Honestly, I don’t see WRC2 as great success. It was no doubt a morale boost to get a title in a low-level championship, but when Kubica moved up to WRC he didn’t achieve much.
Latifi better insight - partly because so much of current F1 is about the Pirellis, and Latifi has much more experience of them than Kubica did. Dave Robson stated that Kubica’s main problem was a failure to get to grips with the Pirellis, and frankly if you can’t manage that, you’re going nowhere. Sim performance is less dependant on this. Latifi has been test driver for a couple of different teams and can bring insights from working with them for a whole season. He has more relevant experience now than Kubica did at the end of 2018. F1 circa 2010 is an age ago. Schumacher and Zanardi both struggled after half the time away that Kubica had.
I don’t accept that Kubica’s performances were in areas where driver performance matters more. As far as good first laps are concerned, you might well say the same about Lance Stroll, who had excellent first laps during his time at Williams. Russell’s starts were not aggressive enough, and I think he knows this, as he was doing a lot of work on his launches near the end of the season. This has to be balanced against the fact that Williams was relying on its drivers not to damage the car too much, and several times we saw Russell backing out rather than being run off the track. It’s interesting that when Kubica tried his usual approach in fighting another car, against Giovinazzi in AD, of running out wide on the exit, Gio didn’t back down and there was a collision. (Similar to what happened on lap 1 at Melbourne with Gasly). The other fact is that for much of the season, Russell could be fairly confident that he would get ahead before too long. But this was definitely a weakness and I hope he fights harder for places at the start in 2020. As far as Monaco is concerned, Kubica did reasonably well until he unnecessarily ran wide and invited a lunge from Gio, though he wasn’t going any quicker than Russell, who was in any case on harder tyres. But sure, Kubica has clearly still got some racecraft, and maybe he’ll be able to use it in DTM if he has enough pace and car control.
Anyway, Kubica is no longer a Williams driver, so it’s not that relevant to talk about him here any more. I certainly hope both he and Williams can move on quickly from this episode.
way offtopic and possibly the only one to feel like this,
but i felt really akward seeing that bright red helmet with the black band in the merc colours
as it reminded me way too much of the bright ferrari red helmet of schumacher when driving for Mercedes
just before his accident.
"Explain the ending to F1 in football terms"
"Hamilton was beating Verstappen 7-0, then the ref decided F%$& rules, next goal wins
while also sending off 4 Hamilton players to make it more interesting"
...now expecting soon-to-be-announced name change to "Titanic F1". It seems the "HRT" and "USF1" monikers were already taken (and "Train Wreck GP" was just too depressing). Hoping they can double their 2018 to 2019 budget increase in 2020 It can only get better from here...I hope.
It can only get better from here...I hope.