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Williams sees ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ as Head guides F1 team ahead

06/05/2019

Claire Williams says the team is finally seeing ‘some light at the end of the tunnel’ as co-founder Patrick Head plays a crucial guiding role behind the scenes.

Williams has had a tough start to the 2019 F1 season after it missed crucial days in pre-season test. The team hasn’t been able to crack on as they sit far off from the midfield outfits in the pecking order, with the Top 3 teams too further away.

Ahead of the season start, shareholder and technical head Paddy Lowe moved away from the scene, citing ‘personal reasons’ and since then there has been no news on his front – which likely suggests more in the story than a mere time-off.

With no breakthrough, the Grove-based team called upon its co-founder Head in a short-term consulting role, where the affects of his work is taking shape as per Claire as she sees ‘some light at the end of the tunnel’ for Williams.

“Patrick coming in, obviously for us is a great thing,” he said. “He’s acting as a guide for our team of engineers at the moment, just making sure that they’re doing everything that they should be doing. We haven’t had the best year, clearly everybody has seen that.

“It started with not getting our chassis to testing, and we’ve had to really play catch up off the back of that. So we are now in a position where we have all our race quantities, we have the quality on those race quantities that we needed.

“And now we’re looking to bring the upgrades that have literally been sitting on a shelf as we’ve cleared the backlog out of manufacturing. So there is some light at the end of the tunnel, I think China demonstrated that we’ve brought a little bit of performance to the car.

“But we’re still far too far behind the ninth-placed team at the moment. We’re doing a lot of work back at Williams. If anyone thinks that we’re just hoping for a miracle or that things will just go our way at some point, that’s not the case.

“A lot of work has been going on to make sure that we put ourselves in the right position. Obviously Patrick is playing a role in that as well.” As it is with every team under immense pressure to deliver, the sale rumours for Williams is already in play as well.

The speculations suggested a buyout from Dimitry Mazepin, father of F2 racer Nikita, who was earlier among the bidders to buy the Force India team, which eventually went to Lawrence Stroll and co. Claire, though, shunned down all the reports.

“I saw those stories; I paid little attention to them. I haven’t met Mr Mazepin to talk about that,” she said. “We had a brief conversation in the mid-part of last year, but subsequent to that there have been no conversations. I’d just like to be really categorical about it: Williams is not for sale.

“I have no intention of putting Williams up for sale. I don’t see why we would. I think certainly in times like this, that the team is going through at the moment, these rumours always come up, but with a business head on, when you’re team isn’t doing well selling at this juncture wouldn’t be the right time to do so.

“I think you would only investigate that opportunity if you are doing well. That’s the right time to sell. But Williams is in this sport and has been for more than four decades and we’ve never wanted to sell. This is what we do; we don’t have anything else to do.

“So, it is not on the market. I don’t want to sell it to everybody. I want to go out and prove that we can do what we are in this sport to do – and that’s to get back on the podium and to win races again.

“That may take us a long time, but it took Frank more than 10 years to do it when he first started in this sport, and I’m sure we’ll have a lot more stuff thrown our way, like we’ve had today, like we’ve had this year, like we had last year. But you don’t give up when times get tough.

“For me it’s a test of your character that you continue and to prove to everybody that you can do it. That’s certainly the belief everybody has at Williams: that we can do this and we’re not going to just give up because the moments have got a bit hard for us.”