2018 Williams F1 Racing - Mercedes

[Manoah2u]

Win-win-win

you confuse win with

lose-lose-lose

[wesley123]

Well Sirotkin is confirmed as Williams driver for 2018. I wonder if Papa Stroll had anything to do with that decision...? Couldn't have Lance being beaten by old experienced drivers.

Of course, anything you don't like in Williams is because of Stroll. It couldn't possibly be that Williams made the choice themselves! I mean, who would pick a driver you can rely for the whole season over a driver who's performance is uncertain, consistency is uncertain and is completely unclear if he could even finish the season.

I never said anything about not liking Williams or any of the issue's are Lance's fault.
But Massa retired (again) because he wasn't going to be re-signed. They had all of those things in Massa so why not just re-sign him? Also recent history has proven that there are many drivers on the current/recent F1 grid who lack performance & consistency.

Fair enough.
I believe Massa unretiring was largely motivated by the gap that was created when Bottas went to Mercedes. When the contract was signed this was the intent of both parties, and over the course of the season Massa changed his mind on this, but Williams did not.

Outside of that, in the tests with Williams that he did the headrest had to be modified, and it is fair to doubt Kubicas ability to get out of the car, with the halo, in the required time.

Consistency will be very important for Williams, and having to suddenly change their driver lineup in the middle of the season wouldn't be very good either.

Yes, very good point, however teams do swap drivers mid season....again recent history has shown this. And although extreme and admittedly a rare occurrence, you only need to look at the Verstappen/Kyvat swap May '16. I wouldn't say that turned out too badly.

Red Bull has much more resources at its disposal to cope with such a situation than that Williams does. Also, Red Bulls position in the championship is much less competitive than that of Williams. Losing a tenth of pace can have serious consequences for Williams' championship position.

And the "couldn't have Lance get beaten" argument is so incredibly flawed.
1. If Lance is so bad as anyone who uses that argument claims to be, wouldn't he then be beaten by virtually all drivers, rendering the whole point moot to begin with?

It's a car & driver championship. Williams > Sauber, Stroll > Palmer. Also, even Maldonado won a race...

I personally think Maldonado has the pace to win races, just not the racecraft. In the same way as I think Stroll has a bright future ahead of him. While he had a difficult season, I do think he grew incredibly and he certainly had his highlights over the course of the year. You wouldn't qualify 4th at a rain soaked Monza track if you didn't have any talent.

2. Who cares if Lance would get beaten to begin with? 2017 showed very well that Lance still is learning, and it is fairly reasonable to assume that Lance would still learn things through the 2018 season. Anyone who would expect, or require him to beat an experienced teammate is being completely unreasonable.
3. This argument makes me sad that it isn't Kubica next to Stroll, because if Stroll would completely destroy Kubica, that would have been really funny. But on the other hand, Kubica not getting the seat and all the people getting mad about it is pretty funny as well.

I wish that people would take a honest look at the driver lineup instead of blaming anything they don't like on Stroll.

I'm not knocking Lance, everyone needs to start somewhere. Although IMO Williams is nothing more than an investment in Lances' future by his father. A playground if you like, somewhere to build experience and confidence. I suspect he wouldn't get the confidence if Kubica would start beating him.

I do think that referring to Strolls money is overly harsh and completely ignores where it does matter; His ability. Everyone talks about his money, how he should have done x because of this money, but everyone forgets -or simply chooses to ignore- that Lance had a really successsful career prior to his F1 debut.

[NathanOlder]

That's it, not supporting this team ever again in my life. biggest disappointment in the last decade, they can only deserve to get what 's coming. Sauber and Kaltenborn 2.0.
will be all the way in the back, no progress, huge fail.

Couldn't have put it better myself, If I could upvote it 20 times, I would!

[NathanOlder]

You wouldn't qualify 4th at a rain soaked Monza track if you didn't have any talent.

Sebastian Bourdais did EXACTLY that! 4th, Monza, rain soaked. and he in F1 terms didn't have any talent.

[marmer]

You wouldn't qualify 4th at a rain soaked Monza track if you didn't have any talent.

Sebastian Bourdais did EXACTLY that! 4th, Monza, rain soaked. and he in F1 terms didn't have any talent.

Also one race proves very little pastor Maldonado has won a race while i don't see him being classed as better than hulk, heifield or even someone like kobiashi

[netoperek]

In official video, Robert confirmed he will have some time in a car and can have "personal goals for this year" (maybe some racing, like Di Resta's DTM?). Seems, he got something guaranteed in a contract. At least that's some consolation. Not much, but a bit It's curious though, that he mentioned that improving simulator will be one of his main tasks. He did that with Mercedes, can do it for Williams. I remember some time ago Lance was complaining that he can't prepare proper setups in a sim and need to start from scratch on fridays (and it often was just not enough)
Oh, and he is not giving money, he's being properly paid for his services (though no details on how much yet)

[Fulcrum]

I'm not surprised at all.

"How fast is Robert capable of driving?"

The longer this drags on, the more it favours Sirotkin.

I know there is a lot of sentiment within the forum and wider community for Robert, but if Sirotkin is simply faster (with significantly less testing time I might add), and brings more money, then the decision is an absolute no-brainer.

Sad for Robert, but not surprised at all. There is little sentiment in business. Now to see how Sirotkin performs relative to Stroll.

[Sevach]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/kubi ... ok-996580/

Chandok's thoughts on the matter.

Clear at this point that Kubica didn't set the world on fire on the tests he did.

[nacho]

Sirotkin is not bad at all, I would expect him to outperform Stroll.

[Manoah2u]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/kubi ... ok-996580/

Chandok's thoughts on the matter.

Clear at this point that Kubica didn't set the world on fire on the tests he did.

because of chandhok's comments, somebody who managed to turn an already slow hrt in almost time travelling slow?
sorry but he's one of the last people in F1 that i'd take really serious.

[Sevach]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/kubi ... ok-996580/

Chandok's thoughts on the matter.

Clear at this point that Kubica didn't set the world on fire on the tests he did.

because of chandhok's comments, somebody who managed to turn an already slow hrt in almost time travelling slow?
sorry but he's one of the last people in F1 that i'd take really serious.

He's a Williams employee so i assume he is speaking with inside knowledge of how the tests went, and how the guys in the garage reacted to it.

[Squid]

That's like saying Di Resta had enough chances to prove himself. Nobody who has been out of F1 cars for so long will get completely up to pace with just one race or a couple of tests, especially with today's cars and tyres.

Of course Chandhok is going to defend his employers when they're getting blasted on social media, he's saying what he has to say. I don't doubt the results of the Abu Dhabi tests, but remember that the deciding factor was that Kubica had difficulty adapting to the new tyres. Isn't this something that can be solved by giving him more track time? Unfortunately, Kubica needed time that Williams couldn't give him before the start of the season, so Sirotkin got the seat.

But Kubica is still there, working with Williams, and he will be getting several FP outings. This leads me to believe that Williams still wants to see if Kubica can get used to the tyres. This isn't over yet, and Kubica knows it.

[marmer]

Was supprized last year when Williams had a good idea that Massa wasn't going to race they never give Paul some of Massas fp1 sessions especially after they were basically caught with there trousers down with no driver that had been in the car before. Fairly sure they were the only team that could have been in that position last year everyone else ran a young driver or back up at some point did they not

[wesley123]

You wouldn't qualify 4th at a rain soaked Monza track if you didn't have any talent.

Sebastian Bourdais did EXACTLY that! 4th, Monza, rain soaked. and he in F1 terms didn't have any talent.

.9s behind his teammate though, who qualified on pole(and won the race). Compared to the example I gave, where Stroll was 1.2s ahead of his teammate who qualified 9th. Also Stroll was 3 points behind his teammate in the season standings, compared to Bourdais being 31 points behind.

[restless]

Win-win-win

you confuse win with

lose-lose-lose

Care to explain why do you think that signing Kubica is a lose?
You think he is not worth even reserve status?