There is still a lot to do with the Williams Formula 1 team, which is why the team itself does not expect to make a big leap in 2024: What is still missing?
The Spanish Grand Prix clearly revealed the weaknesses of the Williams team. The track in Barcelona with its many fast corners requires a high level of downforce from the cars and the Williams FW45 has some catching up to do when it comes to downforce. If you look at the data from the race, the Williams was clearly the slowest car in the field in the Grand Prix. More than four tenths per lap were missing the second slowest team, McLaren.
While you are currently again in last place in the constructors’ championship, in the 2021 season it looked as if you could have fought your way out of the crisis years. There it finished eighth in the team world championship ahead of Alfa Romeo and Haas, but Williams emphasizes that the big breakthrough may not come until 2025.
New team boss James Vowles is aware that Grove lacks the infrastructure to get back into the midfield fight. Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance at Williams, is therefore not expecting the big coup in 2024 either.
Williams: More work needed than we thought
Asked about Vowles’ work, Robson said: “I have full confidence in what he is doing. It’s a question of the time frame before we see real progress. It might take us beyond 2024. There is quite a bit of remodeling and restructuring, and his experience of what the state of the art really looks like has been very insightful.”
“But that also means there’s a lot to do, probably more than we thought. So there’s a lot to do but he’s set the right things in motion but all of that takes time.”
As a result, the team’s ambitions for the rest of the year are rather limited. “I think it’s all about learning,” Robson said. “That’s still the most important thing.”
Williams: Ideas are not easy to implement
“It’s about understanding the subtleties that there are in some of the corners here, why the car isn’t behaving the way the drivers would like it to, and then going back to base and understanding what we need to do to make it works. I think we have a pretty good idea, but of course it’s not easy to put it into practice.”
With last place in the Constructors’ Championship, Williams still has the advantage of having the most time in the wind tunnel of all teams, which gives hope for progress. But Robson doesn’t just want to rely on it and takes stock.
“It’s not that bad,” he says. “[Hier in Barcelona haben] we use this route, probably together with Bahrain, as the two reference routes when trying to understand if we have achieved what we set out to do and also what everyone else has achieved in the same period.”
Williams sure: are better off now than in 2022
“It’s a bit more difficult here because of the changes to the track. We had an idea of how everyone, including us, had evolved in 12 months and we were able to modify that idea for the layout we have this year and judging how we did compared to everyone else. It’s a back and forth.”
“Of course, the Aston Martin is a lot faster than we expected 12 months ago. But there are also some cars that are faster than we are, that’s for sure, but not as much as we thought based on our projections 12 months ago expected.”
“So it feels a bit strange to say that we’re clearly not very good at the moment – it’s pretty obvious why – but if you extrapolate where we thought things might be, it’s not that bad . There’s progress to be made. That hasn’t translated into the order on the timesheets yet, but I think the actual lap time isn’t as bad as it might have been.”
If you compare the distances between the last five races of the 2022 season and the first seven races of the 2023 season, the field has actually moved closer together because Williams was able to catch up. In 2022, Williams was bottom of qualifying, averaging two seconds behind Red Bull. In 2023 this is only 1.39 seconds, while the red lantern in qualifying now goes to Alfa Romeo, 1.41 seconds behind.