Paddy Lowe confirms definite departure from Williams

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.

Lowe has been on an extended leave of absence since 5 March, and he will be leaving Williams and will step down from the board of directors with immediate effect.

Paddy Lowe said: “After a period of careful reflection I have reached the decision that I will not return to work at Williams.

“I wish all my previous colleagues the very best to meet the challenges ahead, which I am sure they will do. I would especially like to thank the Williams fans who are so supportive.”

Claire Williams said: “We understand and respect the decision Paddy has reached and wish him well for the future“.

Despite today's announcement, which was written in the stars, deputy team principal Claire Williams said weeks ago that she was keen to avoid "rash decisions" in trying to replace Lowe at the helm of the technical department.

"We're not in the marketplace looking for people. We've said all along it's more about looking about looking at the structures and the processes that we have in-house.

"There's no point in thinking that just bringing in some people from outside is going to fix the problems that we've got inside our business at the moment, which is the big piece of work that's been ongoing since testing. That takes some time obviously to work out.

"You don't want to make rash decisions and jump in and make mistakes.

"It's actually about focusing on the resource we have internally for us at the moment.

"We've got some really good people at Williams, some really strong people, so we have a technical management team at the moment which are the top tier of aerodynamicists, operations people, that are the ones running the team at the moment, and I have total confidence in them.

"It's about looking at whether they need more support at that level or levels beneath them."

Williams has yet to score any points this season as both Robert Kubica and George Russell are struggling with the team's FW42.