Williams a dark horse?

Just out of interest. If Williams has enough strength to finish in top6 and have better 'potential' than other midfield teams, why have they been 8th or 9th in the last three years and actually lost to those midfield teams? What should be different now? Facilities are still the same as the last three years? I think Sauber and Force India are also pretty similar to what they have been in recent years.

What should be different now? Williams technical team is completely different now. Symonds recognised a lot of weakness in their technical department and decided to put in a completely new structure with A LOT of new, high-profile engineers being hired from other teams in the last months.

 

In 2012 Williams had better car than Sauber and Force India (5 top3 places in qualifying by Maldonado alone says it all, he really is not a qualifyig specialist as he was made to look like by FW34 and struggling Senna!), but their drivers undeperformed big time. In both 2011 and 2013 they couldn't get on top of the diffurser-blowing game and it made them struggling really badly. Also 2011 car, which was looking REALLY promising during Jerez testing, was discovered a fundamental design flaw. It required the floor change to be able to finish races, but once new floor was introduced, the balance was completely gone and the car became uncompetitive.

In summary: Williams' technical team did much worse job than other midfielders in 2011 and 2013, but for 2014, there is completely new technical team at the team.

What an utterly horrible thing to say.

 

Makes me want them to win the WDC and WCC purely to annoy you.

 

What a horrible thing to want. Makes me want the to retire from F1 just to spite you.

What should be different now? Williams technical team is completely different now. Symonds recognised a lot of weakness in their technical department and decided to put in a completely new structure with A LOT of new, high-profile engineers being hired from other teams in the last months.

 

In 2012 Williams had better car than Sauber and Force India (5 top3 places in qualifying by Maldonado alone says it all, he really is not a qualifyig specialist as he was made to look like by FW34 and struggling Senna!), but their drivers undeperformed big time. In both 2011 and 2013 they couldn't get on top of the diffurser-blowing game and it made them struggling really badly. Also 2011 car, which was looking REALLY promising during Jerez testing, was discovered a fundamental design flaw. It required the floor change to be able to finish races, but once new floor was introduced, the balance was completely gone and the car became uncompetitive.

In summary: Williams' technical team did much worse job than other midfielders in 2011 and 2013, but for 2014, there is completely new technical team at the team.

 

Didn't Williams have a completely new technical team led by Mike Coughlan plus new Renault engines? You get the same vibe now, new technical team + new engines. Obviously, as you say, the 2012  car was good, but in 2013 they were nowhere again despite big changes before 2012. So I don't see there is something so fundamental in Williams, which should definitely elevate them above Force India and Sauber. 

What a horrible thing to want. Makes me want the to retire from F1 just to spite you.

 

Fine I get it. Still can't get my head around someone actually hating a team so much that they actually wish them to never have any kind of success at all in the future.

How does anyone know this.?

I also would like to know, not sure how anyone could know such a thing, we'll see which team has good cooling after the Bahrain tests.

Didn't Williams have a completely new technical team led by Mike Coughlan plus new Renault engines? You get the same vibe now, new technical team + new engines. Obviously, as you say, the 2012  car was good, but in 2013 they were nowhere again despite big changes before 2012. So I don't see there is something so fundamental in Williams, which should definitely elevate them above Force India and Sauber. 

I know what you mean because I had the same kind of doubts and uncertainty. I can't guarantee you that they'll get it right this time, but I've read this year's changes are much deeper that those in 2011, which were more like patching hole (mostly by Mark Gillan) according to Claire. But since they're strong enough to regularly strengthen their engineering team at the cost of teams like Force India, they'll get better than them one time, I'm sure. They'll recognise where the problems are and fix them, because they have resources to do so.

Edited by Anderis, 16 February 2014 - 19:15.

Man in a wheelchair last time I checked. You're thinking of Ferrari.

A bit early to say, isn't it? They have Mercedes engine which looks like the one to have at this point and don't seem to have any fundamental problems with the car, so they're probably are not going to be at the back of the grid at the beginning of the season. But there's no way to say anything about their pace at this point, so who knows.

Well my first reaction after reading the OP is 'Why does Felipe Massa *deserve* a WDC?'. I don't understand that part. He's had multiple chances to win WDC's and has never been able to seal the deal. People will point to instances like Singapore 2008, saying its just bad luck, but no, you cant count a couple little misfortunes as the main blame. Everybody has little misfortunes throughout a season. Massa never did enough over a whole season to earn himself a WDC. He's had the machinery to do it. There's no reason in the world a top driver couldn't have convincingly won WDC's in 2007 and 2008 in those Ferrari's. And Alonso showed that with some top-drawer driving, the 2010 and 2012 titles were within sniffing distance as well in those cars. But Massa wasn't anywhere close then.

Massa is just too inconsistent to be a proper title threat in anything but a top-line car. Even then, he's failed twice. Anything less than that and you'd be flushing your $$$ down the drain if you bet on him.

That said, I think a new team might help Felipe a bit. After embarrassing himself the past four years, he can now try and delude himself into thinking that he was treated unfairly at Ferrari and that's the only reason he was so ****. A bit more confidence, falsely gained or not, and he could have a decent showing. He certainly stands a much better chance of appearing competitive against Bottas.

As for Williams, I think its way early to say. I think a lot of people have already come to the belief that the Mercedes powerplant is undeniably the best one out there. Its classic F1-style thinking to jump to conclusions based on scant evidence, so I'm not surprised to see this, although it still remains face-palmingly naïve. And I think if you take away this idea that the Mercedes is superior, the idea that Williams is suddenly going to jump to the front of the field would go out the window.

And IF the Mercedes truly is the class of the field, I still think there's lots of reasons to be sceptical of Williams being a front-runner, much less a title contender. I read an interview where somebody from the team(Symonds?) was saying that most of the tech hirings are only now just coming onto the job and wouldn't have had any impact on things leading up to the present. Other comments seemed to reinforce a very cautious outlook on 2014 for the team, which is not the attitude of a team that has genuine belief that they can compete for the top spots. That said, again, IF the Mercedes is clearly the superior powerplant, then I'd be very much interested in seeing Williams be competitive as I really, really dont want to see this sport being dominated by a single engine manufacturer and if that does happen, the best I could hope for is that many teams are fighting at the front with that powerplant to make it somewhat more interesting.

Edited by Seanspeed, 17 February 2014 - 10:02.

Has anyone read the motorsport monday article today ?? Something about Pat Fry going to Williams ? If i misread the article then please accept my sincere apologies.

 

http://digital.motor...8b-158ac6f047ee

Looking forward to seeing what WIlliams can do this year.

 

BOTTAS!!   

I used to have a lot of respect for Sir Frank and his team, sadly that totally vanished one day for reasons I cannot mention on here without attracting attention from the mods, so since then I've had the pleasure of seeing them plummet down the grid, I certainly dont wish any harm on their drivers but if the team never score another point, that would suit me fine.

Sorry, just being honest

 

Did someone refuse you an autograph or something?

Just out of interest. If Williams has enough strength to finish in top6 and have better 'potential' than other midfield teams, why have they been 8th or 9th in the last three years and actually lost to those midfield teams? What should be different now? Facilities are still the same as the last three years? I think Sauber and Force India are also pretty similar to what they have been in recent years.

There can be no doubt that that Williams has underachieved these last few years.  The team should have some idea of what it takes to generate some success, promote ideas which might get them that, and innovate so that they can stay ahead of others.  The various reports of relative team budget puts them ahead of some teams from purely a brute force point of view so they ought to be very disappointed.

 

However, I have a lot of faith in Pat Symonds' ability to get the team working and put a structure together which compensates for the loss of Patrick Head at the top of the engineering tree.  There are many stories in F1 which demonstrate that how you do something is at least as important as how many people you can afford to put that into action.  Honda and Toyota threw $m's at the issue while Lotus have operated well on a relative shoestring.

 

In Pat we trust.

Has anyone read the motorsport monday article today ?? Something about Pat Fry going to Williams ? If i misread the article then please accept my sincere apologies.

 

http://digital.motor...8b-158ac6f047ee

Not sure how credible this is, but it seems they actually write that Pat Fry would join Williams.

 

I must say I'm confused, because not much time ago, I've read some rumours about NICK Fry joining Williams. But so far, not many reports about one or another.

 

EDIT: The more I think about this, the more I feel they just confused Pat Fry with Pat Symonds.

Edited by Anderis, 17 February 2014 - 13:36.

On a different matter, please don't try and second guess what Longtimefan feels he is unable to post.  Discussing what he doesn't feel at liberty to say, is exactly the same as if we allowed him to say it.  Discussing that he isn't allowed to say it is really discussing moderation, which we also will not permit.

 

What I will say is that posting defamatory remarks which can get the forum shut down will result in your account being suspended or closed, so please do not do it.

 

If you're still confused, PM one of us.

On a different matter, please don't try and second guess what Longtimefan feels he is unable to post.  Discussing what he doesn't feel at liberty to say, is exactly the same as if we allowed him to say it.  Discussing that he isn't allowed to say it is really discussing moderation, which we also will not permit.

 

What I will say is that posting defamatory remarks which can get the forum shut down will result in your account being suspended or closed, so please do not do it.

 

If you're still confused, PM one of us.

 

I didn't mean to start people guessing, I'll see if I can delete the original post, in the meantime please just get back to Williams, I don't want to derail the thread or cause probs. 

Honda got it right eventually but yeah lets just chuck them in with Toyota

 

Pat Head failed to see he was a dinosaur and Frank had no balls to do what was right.

 

Pat Symonds aint gonna get anything done with Williams.

I didn't mean to start people guessing, I'll see if I can delete the original post, in the meantime please just get back to Williams, I don't want to derail the thread or cause probs. 

 

As you've retracted your statement I've retracted my reply.

So, you are telling me that a team that only scored 5 points last season, will charge the front runners this year?

 

 

At best, Williams should just aim to establish themselves as a middle field team that consistently scores points. Even if they were lucky to have a good start this year and mix with the top guys, they don't have the budget to win the development race. I wouldn't want them to replicate Lotus' stint of over-spending money the team doesn't have, at the expense of almost not making the grid the following year.

 

Honda were terrible in 2007/2008, yet went on to win in 2009, (interestingly enough, also after a change to Mercedes engines). The rule changes are even more aggressive this year than then, so yes anything can happen. As Buttoneer also said, trust Pat. He has done it all before with Michael and Fernando.

Might give Ferrari a hard time.

 

Wouldnt that be briliant for Massa.