I largely agree with the post, but there's one thing that does put their 2019 effort in doubt: they will loose the Martini sponsoring and they probably will also loose the money from the Stroll family. That's a lot of funding that dissapears and they already were on a rather tight budget.bill shoe wrote: ↑26 Nov 2018, 01:002018 Williams, um... Actually some positives-
I've been following F1 since the mid-80s and I've seen some really lousy cars, disastrous teams, comical drivers, etc. Williams in 2018 were not a disaster. They scored some points largely on merit.
Nobody in the team made excuses or said it was good enough. All talk was about the need to get better.
There was no ugly spat out in public. No finger pointing at departments or individuals within Williams. Red Bull says all kinds of negative, whiney junk when they have minor problems. Williams kept their sh*t together, behaved professionally, and hopefully gave themselves a chance to focus on fixing the problems.
They provided the goods to their pay drivers. They consistently put a safe and reliable car on the grid. Both drivers were able to score a championship point. And (this goes back to the previous comment) they never said or leaked negative crap about their pay drivers or their pay driver's fathers.
The team calmly considered some type of mid-season overture from Mercedes to become the B-team, and turned it down with a thank you. They preferred to remain independent. They even decided against Mercedes gearboxes, not out of spite but because they determined it was not the best long-run approach. They'll continue shifting their own gears.
They completed yet another season as the only self-funding self-sustaining team on the grid. And this was, what, season 40 or 42 or something? Incredible. And Frank is still there, going (I think) to occasional races in person. And his daughter Claire is running the thing, which gets her intense criticism but it really means she must be doing something right.
Claire was clever enough to bring an experienced person like Paddy on board last year, and she apprently had the balls to back him in 2018 when it was clear that some other people needed to go so Paddy could do the job the way he wanted.
Going forward they have some good people and infastructure in place, they have Paddy, and they have two excellent and interesting drivers at opposite ends of their careers.
And apparently, Russell gives a good powerpoint presentation.
It all gets better in 2019.
In my eyes there needs to be a complete overhaul of the management, especially of the aerodynamics department.
