2017 Williams Martini Racing Team - Mercedes

[LookBackTime]

Looks more and more it will be Kubica!
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/13187 ... liams-test

Robert Kubica in frame for test with Williams Formula 1 team
By Christian Nimmervoll, Dieter Rencken @RacingLines
Published on Sunday September 17th 2017 Formula 1 RSS feed

Robert Kubica is in frame to test for the Williams Formula 1 team as it evaluates its 2018 driver options, Autosport has learned.

Williams could assess Kubica as a potential replacement for Felipe Massa, who is considering finally retiring at the end of the 2017 F1 season.

With Williams running out of options for Lance Stroll's team-mate after Force India confirmed it will keep Sergio Perez next year, rumours are gathering pace that Kubica is high on Williams's shortlist of drivers for 2018.

The team is set to offer Kubica a test in a 2014-spec F1 car some time before next month's Japanese Grand Prix.

It is believed Williams is aiming to do the test at a European circuit and on the Friday of either the Malaysian or Japanese GP to avoid media attention.

Kubica, whose F1 career was interrupted by life-threatening injuries from a rally crash in 2011, tested '12 and '17 F1 cars with Renault this year in an effort to prove he could return to grand prix racing.

But Renault eventually opted for Carlos Sainz Jr as Nico Hulkenberg's 2018 team-mate.

Title sponsor Martini is believed to have a strong say in Williams's driver choice, and it is yet to be seen if the company would be happy with Kubica as a brand ambassador for its global PR campaigns.

Earlier this week it was announced that reigning F1 world champion Nico Rosberg had become part of Kubica's management team.

Rosberg, who drove for Williams from 2006-09 and is well-established at Grove, could potentially take on a supporting brand ambassador role for Martini if Kubica joins Williams.

[LookBackTime]

Shameful and embarrassing strategy on Massa's side. Are they trying to force him into retirement...?!

from Sky F1: wet tires was Massa choice !!!

[Carinni]

Shameful and embarrassing strategy on Massa's side. Are they trying to force him into retirement...?!

Agree. So strange to keep full wet when the pace dropped so much, I can assume they are waiting for safety car, but didn't have changed to inter at sc time, then 4 laps later pitted for tire change? Just dunno what they are doing

[LookBackTime]

[Stalker1]

Unfortunately, did not see the race, but good job from Stroll again, as he achieved 8-th place!

[LookBackTime]

17/09/2017
Singapore Grand Prix


Race Notes
• Lance Stroll finished eighth with Felipe Massa 11th in the Singapore Grand Prix
• Rain started to fall shortly before the race, making this year’s Singapore GP Formula One’s first ever wet night race
• Lance started on the intermediate tyre with Felipe opting to start on the extreme wet
• On lap 1, Lance jumped to P13 with Felipe P14 following a multi-car incident at the start, resulting in the first of several safety car periods
• Lance made his one-stop onto ultrasoft tyres on lap 26, driving a solid race up to P8 on his debut at the Marina Bay Street Circuit
• Felipe had to switch to intermediates before moving to dry tyres, but was one of the first to switch to the ultrasofts, re-joining in P14
• Felipe made the most of a late safety car period, where he pitted for a fresh set of ultrasoft tyres, and worked his way up to P11
• Felipe is 11th in the Drivers’ Championship, ahead of Lance in 12th. The team remains fifth in the Constructors’ Championship with 59 points

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: After a poor qualifying it’s great to come out of another race with some points on the board. It was looking like it would be an interesting race as soon as the rain came in. We have never had rain for the race in Singapore and it was remarkably persistent. Lance chose to start on the intermediate tyre in P18 with Felipe opting for the extreme wet in P17. Unfortunately, along with a few other drivers, the full wet turned out to be the wrong choice. There was a big incident at the start which helped us gain some places. In Lance’s case he drove a great race. He was one of the earliest to stop for dry tyres and he had good pace on the ultrasoft, taking the advantages at every stage. He put up a good defence as well, particularly towards the end, and managed to get an excellent eighth place for his first finish in Singapore; one of the toughest races on the Formula One calendar. Congratulations to him for achieving that, he’ll be very proud of himself for holding steady and driving so well throughout the whole two-hour race. On Felipe’s side, he drove well throughout the whole evening, but really the mistake was made at the beginning and it was impossible to unwind from that extra stop that we needed to make. We hoped to jump straight from the full wet to the dry tyre, which is why we tried to stay out longer in the first stint, but we missed that window by a few laps and he had to make an extra stop for intermediates, which really ruined his race. Nevertheless, it was a good drive from P17 to P11, to finish just outside the points. Congratulations to the team as well, to bring two cars home is a really important achievement in a race of such high attrition. Our reliability was good and we collected some valuable points in the Championship.

Lance Stroll: I think it was a fantastic race. It was raining at the beginning so to capitalise on the start, overtake, and really come through the field due to others making mistakes was fantastic in tricky conditions. Then after that, we ran a steady race. We kept cool. I made one mistake letting Vandoorne by. I just locked up into Turn 7 and he got past but all-in-all, a fantastic result and four points for the team.

Felipe Massa: I’m disappointed with my race. First of all, I started on the wrong tyres which was my decision, but I think in that moment you never know what is going to happen. Many cars decided the same as me, some others different, it was my mistake. Then I was nowhere on the track, I was very slow. When the safety car was out I asked to stop but the team decided to stay out. They were saying that maybe the track would dry. I was at the back so it was my only chance in the race. In the end, I stayed out. I was so slow and my race was finished. I’m disappointed for my race but not for the team because Lance managed to score points. At the end, it could have been worse, looking at where we started the race, so not bad for the team but a disaster for me.

[Stalker1]

I do not understand, why Williams is considering Kubica? Tests with Renault have shown, that he is able to drive with an F1 car, he is still quick, but I am not sure about, is he better than Massa now? Massa has shown this season, he still has the will and speed to race! More than that, throughout the interviews, when he has talked about the issues with the car and the future under Lowe, he has been clearly stating that he would like to stay another year with the team.

[OneAlex]

I don't know if anyone else in the UK (Or outside of the UK on a proxy) watched Guy Martin's F1 pit stop challenge on Channel 4, but it followed him learning how to be part of the Williams pit stop crew and then taking part in Spa.

It was fun to see some more behind the scenes of Williams and also see some of the personalities among the mechanics! It's great that Williams and Liberty allowed it.

It also helped explain that 4 second pit stop.

[Greg_OR]

I do not understand, why Williams is considering Kubica? Tests with Renault have shown, that he is able to drive with an F1 car, he is still quick, but I am not sure about, is he better than Massa now?

Just wait and we will see, as team wants to test him on track after simulator part, that means he has shown something, and IMO just equalling Felippe would not be enough to engage further. Apart of driver pace, Kubica is very good at providing feedback for engineers and factory, people at Enstone would like to have him back, as once he gave them a big positive boost, but all this engine politics broke his return with Renault. I hope there will be good "chemistry" also with Grove team if this will happen.

[Raleigh]

Kubica would be an exciting choice, one of the biggest missed talents of the modern era and still relatively young, 32 is the same age as Hamilton, if he can come back at a competitive level probably has another 4-5 seasons left.

Regardless of whether Massa stays for 2018 he won't be around in the long term, the team needs a top level driver to lead them forwards.

[LookBackTime]

Williams is turning 40. Time to uncork Mansell's FW14B and party like it’s 1992

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/big-re ... me-changer

P.S. some unseen pictures of the internals of the car too!

[LookBackTime]

Massa: Williams mentality change won’t improve results until 2018

Haydn Cobb
19 Sep 2017

"Many ideas I have pushed for three years and it has not changed. I think now the mentality has changed, but it’s not for the now, it’s for the future."

Felipe Massa says the mentality and development method inside Williams has changed dramatically in recent months, aided by the arrival of Paddy Lowe, but fears results won’t improve until next year.

The Brazilian driver braced for a tricky Singapore Grand Prix with Williams’s weaknesses set to be exposed at the Marina Bay Circuit and despite a number of cars failing to finish ahead of him Massa still missed out on points in 11th place – only finishing ahead of Pascal Wehrlein in the Sauber using year-old Ferrari engines.

Massa, whose future for 2018 remains uncertain, says the British squad has changed its ‘mentality of development’ which he hopes can turnaround the team’s fortunes but is concerned the impact won’t be felt until next season with focus shifting to the 2018 car.

“I don’t think it will be addressed for this season but I think we can still improve a little bit the car this season,” Massa said. “The mentality of the development needs to be different. It is different already, but maybe not for this year.

“Many mentalities, many ideas I have pushed for three years and it has not changed. I think now the mentality has changed, but it’s not for the now, it’s for the future.”

Massa believes new Williams technical chief Lowe, who joined from Mercedes at the start of 2017, has helped change things but his impact won’t be evident until next season.

“Yes, [Paddy has helped] a lot. Not only Paddy, but I think the mentality of the team,” he said. “There were so many errors it was not really correct but now it’s correct. Unfortunately, we couldn’t improve the car in the way we wanted this year, but the mentality is completely different already.

“The idea is completely different for developing a new car, which I believe Williams can have next year in terms of even the looks. But it’s impossible to say now how it will be next year. You don’t know what the others are doing.

“Everybody knows the rules, the rules are the same next year. To be honest, we know other teams are not stupid, but it’s important to change the mentality to really build things in the right way. We’ll see.”

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/882725/1/m ... until-2018

[Stalker1]

"Engineer" Massa putting pressure on Williams! Although, I wonder, what he is referring to? The first thing, I remember, is developing new front wing without making adjustments or development work on other areas of the car and then realizing, the front wing does not work as expected.

[LookBackTime]

[media]https://twitter.com/F1/status/910492418390188037[/media]

[LookBackTime]

LOWE: WE WILL BE MAKING SUBSTANTIAL CHANGES
21 September, 2017

Williams technical chief Paddy Lowe has confirmed that big changes, across the board, are on the cards for his team which has under-performed this year

Lowe, who joined the Grove outfit in March this year, after a highly successful spell at Mercedes, told Sky, “We will be making some quite substantial changes.”

“There are lots of different things that we will be doing and we are well into that at the moment. We’ve got some great engineers, some of whom have also come from other teams in recent years, so there are a lot of great ideas there.”

“We have a lot of people who know what it takes to win and we will put the best of that together and make the best car we can. There will be quite a few areas where we will be changing philosophy.”

Both veteran Felipe Massa and rookie Lance Stroll have struggled with the FW40 and as a result Williams are only fifth in the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship with 59 points, but 65 points behind Force India in fourth and seven points ahead of Toro Rosso in sixth.

Massa has questioned the rate of development of the team relative to their rivals, believing that not enough is being done to keep pace in the relentless ‘arms-race’ between grands prix.

Lowe agrees, “We are fighting hard in the midfield and we haven’t created any distance ahead of it and if anything we have slipped well into it over the last couple of months. We need to understand if something is going wrong or if we have been out-developed.”

“We need to improve in all sorts of areas, that’s the nature of the competition. It’s about out-competing the other teams in the most important areas. That needs talent, time and money. The problem is no team has enough of those, they always want more.”

“We have a set of resources and it is our job to do the very best we can with those resources. It’s about efficiency. I think we can be a lot more efficient than we have been at the moment.”

“As we build more success, that will attract to us more resources to improve ourselves further. That’s the formula of grand prix development,” added Lowe.

Behind Ferrari and McLaren, Williams are the third most successful team in Formula 1 with 114 grand prix victories, nine constructors’ world titles and seven drivers’ world championships on their illustrious CV.