Claire Williams opens up on how they are keeping up their staff’s morale in testing times as she goes in-depth to reveal some details from the latest F1 meetings.
With the world having ground to a halt due to the spread of COVID-19, many are understandably down in the dumps. This effect is worsened by the lack of live sport or entertainment and social interaction.
At Williams, though, spirits remain high among those who haven’t been furloughed, and while this group is a small sample size, team principal Claire told Sky Sports F1 about the group’s fun activities which are keeping morale in a good place, even if most are itching to get racing once again.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on, but you know, there’s also a lot of people that we’ve had to furlough so we don’t connect with those guys as much because they’re at home and not able to work but we’ve got about 90-odd people that aren’t furloughed, and with them, we’re on Microsoft teams,” said Williams.
“We had our executive committee meeting, and when you’re on these calls you’re a bit bored and it’s lovely to see everybody but we got a bit crazy in our last meet and started putting crazy backgrounds on, which is always a bit fun. For people’s birthdays, we have team calls and different celebratory stuff in the background – we decorate our backdrops so that people can see them.
“I think people are just really looking forward, though, to being back to work, and there are so many messages that I get from people within Williams saying ‘I just can’t wait to get back to the office now and get going racing again’ so morale is still in a good place and I think a lot of people are just enjoying the time to be at home, but I know a lot of people that just want to get back to work.”
As Williams mentioned, most of the team’s meetings have been conducted through Zoom – a platform that has seen heavy use from most working people. Also conducted through it are the FIA meetings between team figures, which the Brit provided insight into.
The hot topics remains the cost cap with 2022 F1 regulations also in the frame, there has been much speculation about the happenings behind closed doors, and while she did not talk as much as her peers about these things, Williams shared some interesting thoughts about how her personal experiences in the meetings have improved, due to the more organized nature of the virtual discussions versus real ones.
“It’s just done on Zoom, and it’s actually been really great for me, because I am invariably the only woman who attends these meetings, and normally I always count the number of men that there are in the room and there’s normally 30-odd blokes, and me,” said Williams. “And so I can normally never get a word in these meetings, but on Zoom, you have that ability to raise your hand, and Nicholas Tombazis who chairs the meetings chairs them brilliantly and nobody’s allowed to speak unless your hand is raised.
“He does it in order of when you put your hand up, so I still get nervous going to these meetings and I was still nervous to raise my hand on Zoom, but I got to raise my hand and Nikolas said, yup Claire’s turn to talk, and so I actually get to talk in these meetings now because everyone has to listen once you raise your hand because it’s not your turn and you can’t keep trying to get a word in anyway like in a normal meeting. They’ve been really productive just from a content perspective.
“I think the FIA who have handled the agendas with F1, have done a fantastic job of keeping us focused. In the beginning, coming back from Australia, and doing the meetings and they were lasting four or five hours which is quite a long time on Zoom and you kind of think to yourself ‘how to I get up to go to the bathroom without people realizing that I disappeared and you can’t work out how to mute the camera or whatever.
“Everybody’s being productive as I’ve said and everybody’s really understood clearly the situation, and it’s really being incredibly responsible for the future of our sport, and we’re putting exactly what needs to be put in place in place, so that we as teams all have a strong future in the sport, and that’s been the work that’s been going on for the past six or seven weeks.
“I think we’re pretty much at the end of that process now, and I think within the next seven or ten days we’ll have the final regulations coming out which is obviously great because of how we’re moving forward for the next six to twelve months which are so important for all of our businesses,” summed up Williams.
Focusing more on her take with regards to the content of the meetings, and the budget cap, for example, she gave her two cents on its potential lowering – something that would be great for not only Williams but other teams in their area of the size range, according to the 43-year-old.
“We’ve always been really supportive of the cost-cap coming in, we’ve been talking about it for almost a decade now, the need for F1 to have a cost-cap,” said Williams. “It’s so important for teams like ours who are independent who don’t just have unlimited amounts of budget. And so we were delighted when the $175m budget came through and then with coronavirus we’ve had to readdress that situation and it’s going to be coming in at an even lower level, which is clearly even better news for a team like ours.
“There are difficulties for the big teams [with a $145m cap]. They’re operating on budgets that are so much greater than that and I think the very fact that they’ve seen the reality and the gravity of the situation, it’s not going to be easy moving forward and they’ve had to come down even further.
“I have great sympathy for them but also I’m so pleased that they’ve seen the enormity of the situation and reacted in the way that they’ve needed to,” summed up Williams. The situation with the cost cap is now becoming clear with $145 million set to come in for 2021.
Aside from the above, Williams spoke on her father’s good health, while her drivers, George Russell and Nicholas Latifi also had chats with the Sky F1 pundits. Between the two of them, the topics of ESports and some banter related to the former’s tendency to take Alexander Albon out were discussed, among a few other things.
There was also a discussion on the best Williams drivers of the past where the current team principal Claire chose Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna, and Juan Pablo Montoya – Russell and Nicholas agreed wholeheartedly with this assessment.
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The story was edited by Darshan Chokhani
