Mid-season review: Williams, in search of lost time
In just a few seasons, Williams has gone from being the third-best team on the grid to regularly occupying the last rows of the starting line-up. A worrying situation for this historic Formula 1 team, which does not seem ready to improve in the coming months.
10th in the Constructors’ Championship: 4 points
More than ever, when discussing Williams team’s descent into hell, the numbers speak for themselves: 3rd in the Constructors’ Championship in 2014 and 2015 with 320 and 257 points respectively, then 5th in 2016 and 2017 with 138 and 83 points. In 2018, the British team stands at the 10th and last place with 4 points at mid-season.
The upheaval in the team’s management with Claire Williams taking charge and Paddy Lowe’s arrival at the technical helm was too much to handle for a team already on the financial brink. As the last true independent alongside Force India not receiving support from a major manufacturer (like Sauber or Haas with Ferrari), Williams is paying the price for a glaring lack of resources to develop their car and find solutions to their performance deficiencies.
If we add to that the relative inexperience of its pair of drivers – even though Lance Stroll already has a season under his belt, Williams is playing with fire and mainly losing credibility with its partners. Its title sponsor, the Martini group, has already chosen to leave the ship next year due to a lack of results.
The pilots
With Felipe Massa’s departure, Lance Stroll (18th, 4 pts) has logically had to take on the role of leader in the team. However, this situation doesn’t really suit the young Canadian, who severely lacks the technical expertise to provide a clear and effective direction to his engineers. Additionally, increasingly detailed rumors about his father, Lawrence, wanting to buy Force India to place his son there do not reflect well on the 19-year-old and his level of involvement in the Williams project.
For his part, Sergey Sirotkin (unranked, 0 points) is experiencing a particularly challenging first year. Clearly under pressure from the third driver, the experienced Robert Kubica, who is just waiting for the team’s green light to put on a starter’s suit, the Russian driver is unable to demonstrate his true potential, except on rare occasions, like during qualifying, where he outshines his teammate. His lack of experience is obviously detrimental to his team, but that is surely not the priority for Williams. An embarrassing statistic is that at this stage of the season, he remains the only driver in the field not to have scored a single point: the numbers are, indeed, unforgiving.
Face to face… | Score
1 | In Qualifying | 7-4 for Sirotkin
2 | In Race | 6-5 for Sirotkin *
*: the statistic does not account for cases of double dropout (in Germany here)
| Driver | Qualifications: number of top 10 | Qualifications: best position | Race: number of top 10 | Race: best position | Number of championship points | |
| 1 | Lance Stroll | 0 | 11th (Azerbaijan) | 1 | 8th (Azerbaijan) | 4 |
| 2 | Sergey Sirotkin | 0 | 12th (Azerbaijan and Germany) | 0 | 13th (Austria) | 0 |
The rest of the season
Hard to believe that Williams will be able to avoid the constructors’ wooden spoon at the end of the last Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi. Especially since the team’s leadership, with Claire Williams at the forefront, already has a lot on their plate for the survival of the team. The possible departure of Lance Stroll and his suitcases full of dollars to Force India could also weaken the Grove outfit, which, with Paddy Lowe at the helm of the technical department, still has a major asset up its sleeve. For now…
