2018 Williams F1 Racing - Mercedes

[ringo]

I think currently Williams needs to restructure itself to that of the modern day works teams such as mercedes and ferrari and now renault; who are in the process of restructuring to put up a title challenge.
Paddy is still fairly new to the team, and i think by next year Williams will be in better shape. Now it's just teething pains with the new car. Soon enough they will figure out the strengths and weaknesses of the current organization structure and produce a better operation and team next year.
This year's car is strangely a poor performer, but i believe this is down to it being very new. Next year should see an improvement as we have seen when mercedes improved on their 2012 to 2013 car and then the 2014 car.

As for the drivers and Russian links, this wont change any time soon. I believe Paddy's wife is a Russian actress, so there is probably a lot of behind the scenes links with Russia for Paddy.

[Morteza]

[media]https://twitter.com/hlawiczka/status/994456122764513280[/media]

[media]https://twitter.com/Motor_Sport/status/ ... 2978417665[/media]

Mark Hughes speculates Tim Goss will be joining Williams as Wood's replacement.

[continuum16]

I also believe that Goss is in a reasonable position to fill the slot. Paddy worked with him at McLaren for a number of years, and he’s probably the largest free agent on the market in terms of technical personnel.

[Manoah2u]

So, Ed Wood layed off surely because they can't pay him anymore. That's gonna be another hurt for the team.

Also Williams has announced more involvement or participation in Esports, so more money that they don't have is going lost.
Seems to me Williams is rather preparing to leave F1 and get into Esports. Wouldn't surprise me to see Williams in Formula E and/or in WEC/LeMans in a few years time.
would leave an empty spot for a team to participate in F1.

Aston Martin splitting off with RedBull in 2021 and forming their own team, whilst RedBull stays with Honda ?

[ringo]

Maybe he has been leading the design of crap cars over the years and Paddy identified the "bad actor" and asked him to be demoted, and chose to leave instead?

[Raleigh]

To be fair to Ed Woods while he did not pen Williams most successful cars he took over in 2006 which is just after the team lost their works BMW partnership, his years at Williams were marked by smaller budgets and customer engines. So let's not get all Tifosi and blame everything on people who are leaving the team, we don't know the reasons for this restructuring.

[F1NAC]

Kubica ran with new bits vs Strolls old. Now they are putting old bits on Kubica's car.

[bucker]

Was anybody watching Kubica onboard footage. He is using only left hand and it looks like he is also shifting upwards on the left side. He has his right hand only touching steering wheel, so it looks like that he is using both of them.

[bauc]

Was anybody watching Kubica onboard footage. He is using only left hand and it looks like he is also shifting upwards on the left side. He has his right hand only touching steering wheel, so it looks like that he is using both of them.

If that is indeed the case, he will not be able to pull the full lock in Monaco @the Grand Hotel turn (6)

[Zynerji]

Was anybody watching Kubica onboard footage. He is using only left hand and it looks like he is also shifting upwards on the left side. He has his right hand only touching steering wheel, so it looks like that he is using both of them.

If that is indeed the case, he will not be able to pull the full lock in Monaco @the Grand Hotel turn (6)

Add a "brodie knob" to the steering wheel?

[adb]

It really felt bad watching the way Robert holds the steering wheel in left-handers and struggles while counter-steering

[PhillipM]

He wasn't doing too badly with it given the car is a dog at the minute and he was still fast comparitively even within a single FP session.

[adb]

He wasn't doing too badly with it given the car is a dog at the minute and he was still fast comparitively even within a single FP session.

Actually, I think he's done well, but the way he's holding the wheel, I just don't know how to feel about it, how much of an issue it could actually be.

[bill shoe]

Ugg! Williams are slowest two cars by significant margin in both Friday practice sessions. Spain is a relatively straight-forward track that responds to power and aero. Power with Merc engine is at least OK. That leaves aero as the stinking pile that's responsible for weak performance.

This would be consistent with season-trend so far where Williams are more competitive at tracks with long-straights and tight corners, and less competitive at track with long, fast corners.

[netoperek]

It has been already confirmed that the hand is not an issue. Even Paddy admitted it and they took time to make sure. Kubica has been asked about the way he's holding the wheel in this interview: https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/44086164
Today Robert said that it's the worst balance they had whole season and Lance had the same impression. As they were testing aero stuff, so they couldn't change anything with setup during entire FP1. Robert's (and Lance's) job in FP1 was to collect as much usable data as he can, so no fancy time attack driving for him today. Some voices suggested that bad baseline balance has not exactly been a coincidence, so in FP2 SS and Lance could manage a much better times with improved setup in FP2, to silence the critics regarding driver lineup. Well, Kubica is still the faster of the three, even though Lance improved by 1.3 s with new setup on FP2. With some more bad news, Paddy said that softer compounds simply wouldn't work today. On a brigher note, he and Smedley pointed out that they have pinpointed the source of aero instability. Same has been stated by RK, but sadly he added that it's not something that can be corrected within a day or a month.
Even though I'm really happy for Robert for doing a good job on his first official session in 7 years, there's not much more to be happy about, as it's an overall horrible weekend for Williams so far.