It is worth recalling that Williams pre-Dorilton hung on to producing metal gearbox casings when the rest of the field had long since moved to carbon.JPower wrote: ↑14 Aug 2026, 18:45Everything. Facilities, manufacturing, engineering tools, wind tunnel upgrades, etc.TyreSlip wrote: ↑12 Aug 2026, 18:20What is it about the infrastructure that needs upgrading? Better and more engineering tools? More floor space?WardenOfTheNorth wrote: ↑12 Aug 2026, 11:46As I understand it, Williams was that far behind in terms in factory infrastructure, that even spending up to the CapEx limit, they're still not able to bring it up to standard quickly enough.
I can't remember which podcast it was, but one of them recently mentioned as well that Williams was still having to outsource some parts that other teams are able to manufacture inhouse.
James had admitted that he tried to push the team to places they simply don't have the infrastructure for.
My hope is that the old addage that "you learn more from failure than success" holds true and that this year is the kick in the proverbial that the team needs.
I thought Vowles had things covered, but the results of decades of underinvestment are clearly higher than he estimated. Really a wonder Williams has gotten this far.
The team had a fantastic machine shop, harking back to a time when that was how cars were made.
Ed Wood, who was much-maligned and ultimately left, was the Chief Designer. That term didn’t really mean what most think it did. In the old days, a Chief Designer led the drawing office. But wasn’t necessarily responsible for major innovation. The team was very light on, especially, aero skills.
Williams also had a huge staffing problem. IIRC, pre-Dorilton at least, they had a huge wage bill but couldn’t afford the redundancy payments to downsize many of the old-timers.
So Vowles broadly has had to try to start again. He’s not the first to have been caught out by the inertia of the place - Wood, did a good job with the resources he had, Lowe utterly ballsed up the FW42 (similar tales to Vowles - too much inertia in the system coupled with not enough current capability and resource).
My sense is that too many have too fond a feeling for the place, believing that stable management and money is all that’s needed to unlock greatness. But unless the whole operation is re-cast in the mould of a modern, winning, team, I fear this story will has more repetitions yet to come.
