Still no Williams in Barcelona
Williams will miss the first two days of testing in Barcelona since the FW42 has still not arrived on site. This raises concerns about the upcoming season.
There were significant doubts about Williams’ future when Lawrence Stroll decided to buy Force India to place his son Lance there. This decision was made especially after Martini decided to no longer be the title sponsor of the team, after several years of association.
The team pulled off a nice media coup by giving their second seat to Robert Kubica, who will combine his experience with the youth of George Russell. But beyond the talent of a driver who hasn’t competed in an F1 race since 2009, it was the financial compensation he was able to provide the team that tipped the balance while Mercedes was looking for a solution for another one of its protégés, Frenchman Esteban Ocon.
Things seemed to be looking up when the team unveiled the arrival of a new title sponsor. But some doubts were already raised when its identity was revealed, namely ROKiT, a startup that hasn’t even commenced its commercial activities yet.
The beginning of the winter testing was supposed to provide more clarity in order to determine if the Grove-based team would be able to get closer to the midfield teams, similar to what Sauber managed to do last year. However, it’s clear that significant questions can be raised as the team wasn’t able to field a single car on the first two days of testing.
Thus, on Sunday evening, Williams issued a press release to explain: « Unfortunately, we had to delay our pre-season start to Tuesday morning. We have had an extremely busy winter at Grove preparing the FW42 for the upcoming season. Despite everyone’s best efforts, we need more time before it is ready to run. »
Missing one of the eight short testing days is already a challenge in a sport where every lap counts. But it seems the issue is still not resolved since the team announced this Monday that: « It seems more likely that we won’t be able to run before Wednesday at the earliest. It’s obviously extremely disappointing but it’s unfortunately our current situation. We will run the FW42 as soon as we are able to do so. »
When reading Claire Williams’ statements, one feels far from having 100% confidence in being able to field this famous car even by the third day of testing.
For the optimists, this could be explained by the fact that the team pushed developments to the maximum and was not able to finalize the production of all the parts in time. The second aspect could simply be that major development problems led the team management to delay the production of a poorly conceived car. This raises questions about the future of the technical team, starting with Paddy Lowe, the technical director, who, according to some insiders, may be on the hot seat.
