[ 2020 ] Williams F1 Team - Mercedes

[Jolle]

I feel sorry for the Williams Family having to sell the team. They have sold lots of Williams Assets over the past few years. I do think the rot had set a decade or more ago. I think they had a good 3 years when the Turbo Hybrid era started, they sort of lucked in in 2014, had a good 2015 and 2016, but 2017 saw the rot appear again with 2018 it got bad and 2019 was the apex of it.

The team invest a estimated £7.5m in their gearbox department, when they could hire in a supply for £4.5m a year from McLaren. Their gearbox is heavier than others, 20Kg is an estimate, they could easily take a McLaren supply and save weight and get a faster car. Paddy Lowe said they wouldn't do this ever, as their Aluminium case was integral to their car design he said or something.

They have or have had a blame culture in the team, that was ultimately a toxically dangerous mix in F1, with one department blaming one another and people within a department.

This is a team that is so set in its ways, its almost as it needs a bloody mass firing event, with maybe 50-70 fired in one fell swoop, with another new 60-85 new faces in the team. A new ethos, a scrapping of the gearbox department to save money and add performance.

The team is ripe for a takeover from a Canadian food magnate, a Japanese Car Manufacturer or a second American team who have been lined up with a Mercedes Chassis team take over, see Penskie.

F1 in a nutshell is at a crossroads, Williams if for sale and i can see another team being sold and one manufacturer leaving. The rules for the next decade need to do something about aero testing as a balance of performance, and the budgets need to be drastically reduced, this seems to be happening. F1 needs to go further and limit data gathering and data analysis, give the teams more unknowns. F1 needs to show it can be a lean and efficient operation, dare i say even a profit making sport for the teams? Then once we have a fair and even championship, then we open the technical regs up and make the cars faster for a lower budget.

Williams is just the first to blink in this economic environment, there will be more. Renault i think will be the other with Sauber and Haas looking at options. To be honest, all teams will look at their options, i can see Red Bull and Ferrari launching Le Mans Hypercar teams. F1 and motorsport as we knew it, as we loved it, it is over. Sport as a whole will see budgets slashed, i suggest Footballers will see wages cut and transfer fees culled. There is a new normal coming to all sport, not just our own.

With regard to the gearbox, I think I read somewhere that the reason they won't source them elsewhere is that they are an engineering company and it wouldn't look very good for an engineering company to buy in one of the most technical engineering parts on the car outside of the PU.

Which is all well and good if your gearbox is as good as everyone else's. If it really is 20kg as you mentioned though, then I would argue that doesn't reflect quite so well on the company!!

Don't forget, just a few years ago the FIA was busy with a tender of a standerd gearbox for F1. This was (and if they go trough with it) still a good commercial opportunity for Williams. Just like McLaren, Williams supplies other racing series of equipment.

[rohan]

I feel sorry for the Williams Family having to sell the team. They have sold lots of Williams Assets over the past few years. I do think the rot had set a decade or more ago. I think they had a good 3 years when the Turbo Hybrid era started, they sort of lucked in in 2014, had a good 2015 and 2016, but 2017 saw the rot appear again with 2018 it got bad and 2019 was the apex of it.

The team invest a estimated £7.5m in their gearbox department, when they could hire in a supply for £4.5m a year from McLaren. Their gearbox is heavier than others, 20Kg is an estimate, they could easily take a McLaren supply and save weight and get a faster car. Paddy Lowe said they wouldn't do this ever, as their Aluminium case was integral to their car design he said or something.

They have or have had a blame culture in the team, that was ultimately a toxically dangerous mix in F1, with one department blaming one another and people within a department.

This is a team that is so set in its ways, its almost as it needs a bloody mass firing event, with maybe 50-70 fired in one fell swoop, with another new 60-85 new faces in the team. A new ethos, a scrapping of the gearbox department to save money and add performance.

The team is ripe for a takeover from a Canadian food magnate, a Japanese Car Manufacturer or a second American team who have been lined up with a Mercedes Chassis team take over, see Penskie.

F1 in a nutshell is at a crossroads, Williams if for sale and i can see another team being sold and one manufacturer leaving. The rules for the next decade need to do something about aero testing as a balance of performance, and the budgets need to be drastically reduced, this seems to be happening. F1 needs to go further and limit data gathering and data analysis, give the teams more unknowns. F1 needs to show it can be a lean and efficient operation, dare i say even a profit making sport for the teams? Then once we have a fair and even championship, then we open the technical regs up and make the cars faster for a lower budget.

Williams is just the first to blink in this economic environment, there will be more. Renault i think will be the other with Sauber and Haas looking at options. To be honest, all teams will look at their options, i can see Red Bull and Ferrari launching Le Mans Hypercar teams. F1 and motorsport as we knew it, as we loved it, it is over. Sport as a whole will see budgets slashed, i suggest Footballers will see wages cut and transfer fees culled. There is a new normal coming to all sport, not just our own.

With regard to the gearbox, I think I read somewhere that the reason they won't source them elsewhere is that they are an engineering company and it wouldn't look very good for an engineering company to buy in one of the most technical engineering parts on the car outside of the PU.

Which is all well and good if your gearbox is as good as everyone else's. If it really is 20kg as you mentioned though, then I would argue that doesn't reflect quite so well on the company!!

It isn't 20kg heavier. Maybe 2kg at the very most, but most likely 200g.

[PlatinumZealot]

The gearbox is a red herring. It is far from the problem. The problem has been poor aerodynamics and suspension.
Even in 2014 they lucked out with the Power unit and a benign aerodynamic that was simple enough to blast down the straights and keep undesired aero behaviours away but once they tried to produce more downforce it showed its failings. They changed aero philosophy to something mote complicated and made it even worse. All this says to me is that Williams areo department needs a huuuge reshuffling and retooling.

In fact from a managemnet point of view they should have done what racing point did and build a blue Mercedes along with the retooling and reshuffling. They would be OK now if they did that.

[coaster]

Massa, Bottas and Martini money showed very
real glimpses of a team on the rise, i would not be so harsh. Remember Gascoyns Spyker had a front running engine and little money for anything else and they fared no better than current williams. Im pretty sure that the Martini money lost was the poison that paralysed development.

[Lynx]

The team invest a estimated £7.5m in their gearbox department, when they could hire in a supply for £4.5m a year from McLaren. Their gearbox is heavier than others, 20Kg is an estimate, they could easily take a McLaren supply and save weight and get a faster car. Paddy Lowe said they wouldn't do this ever, as their Aluminium case was integral to their car design he said or something.

There is always so much talk about Williams gearbox and how it is outdated and so on. Do you have any source for that 20 kg overweight remark? Because much is written about it but I haven't read one single reliable info in recent past about it being overweight by such extent. (By reliable info I mean that it comes from a person with recent F1 technical experience.)

[ESPImperium]

The team invest a estimated £7.5m in their gearbox department, when they could hire in a supply for £4.5m a year from McLaren. Their gearbox is heavier than others, 20Kg is an estimate, they could easily take a McLaren supply and save weight and get a faster car. Paddy Lowe said they wouldn't do this ever, as their Aluminium case was integral to their car design he said or something.

There is always so much talk about Williams gearbox and how it is outdated and so on. Do you have any source for that 20 kg overweight remark? Because much is written about it but I haven't read one single reliable info in recent past about it being overweight by such extent. (By reliable info I mean that it comes from a person with recent F1 technical experience.)

It was mentioned in commentary once in 2016 or 2017 if i remember. It was corroborated by Peter Winsor, not the most reliable source. The Williams gearbox is state of the art in the internals of it, it's the lack of a carbon case that is what is hamstringing it. I did hear Paddy Lowe was wanting the carbon case in 2017, however the team liked the fact they can manufacture a new aluminium case in 4 to 6 weeks with new rear suspension internals and suspension points if they ever needed to. The case may be lighter now, as Lowe challenged the gearbox department to remove as much material as they could from the case, so they case may be circa 10~12Kg lighter now.

[proteus]

Guess who cat dragged in:

https://www.grandprix247.com/2020/06/01 ... -williams/

Great saviour in disguise, going to save them with 9 digit strong cash injection worth exactly 0$.

[bill shoe]

There is always so much talk about Williams gearbox and how it is outdated and so on. Do you have any source for that 20 kg overweight remark? Because much is written about it but I haven't read one single reliable info in recent past about it being overweight by such extent. (By reliable info I mean that it comes from a person with recent F1 technical experience.)

I also used to be skeptical about the large weight savings claimed for carbon vs. aluminum. However, there was a Racecar Engineering article many years ago that gave gearbox weights for different types of construction. The differences were indeed around 10-20 kg for carbon vs. aluminum!

Fully detailed FEA of gearboxes has been normal for a long time, so I doubt the aluminum box has reduced its weight penalty since them. If anything, carbon has probably lost additional weight due to more experience and more sophisticated construction techniques.

So yes, the Williams team are carrying around the equivalent extra mass of two bowling balls at back of their car. And they stick to it with apparently no intention to go carbon.

[coaster]

Even the name R__h S____y, it sounds like a fictional spies name, and nobody could find a retail outlet stocking the drink.
Such a reclusive and enigmatic character, i bet he reads this thread, hi Richard.
Where do all the hidden millions come from, such an elusive person, a real Howard Hughs of our age.

Fact check
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Energy

Hello William, i got your name wrong.

[drunkf1fan]

The team invest a estimated £7.5m in their gearbox department, when they could hire in a supply for £4.5m a year from McLaren. Their gearbox is heavier than others, 20Kg is an estimate, they could easily take a McLaren supply and save weight and get a faster car. Paddy Lowe said they wouldn't do this ever, as their Aluminium case was integral to their car design he said or something.

There is always so much talk about Williams gearbox and how it is outdated and so on. Do you have any source for that 20 kg overweight remark? Because much is written about it but I haven't read one single reliable info in recent past about it being overweight by such extent. (By reliable info I mean that it comes from a person with recent F1 technical experience.)

It was mentioned in commentary once in 2016 or 2017 if i remember. It was corroborated by Peter Winsor, not the most reliable source. The Williams gearbox is state of the art in the internals of it, it's the lack of a carbon case that is what is hamstringing it. I did hear Paddy Lowe was wanting the carbon case in 2017, however the team liked the fact they can manufacture a new aluminium case in 4 to 6 weeks with new rear suspension internals and suspension points if they ever needed to. The case may be lighter now, as Lowe challenged the gearbox department to remove as much material as they could from the case, so they case may be circa 10~12Kg lighter now.

The thing is state of the art internals does nothing for you. Great management in a team is about maximising the performance in a given budget, not ego, not pride, just getting absolutely top dollar value for every penny spent. The gearbox could be the masterpiece of all technology in F1 but if it's value is terrible then it's hurting the team more than helping it.

That seems to be the major thing with Williams, ego and pride getting in the way of managing the team to be the best it can be.

Williams can iterate suspension on only 4-6 weeks, that's fantastic for 1980s an even early 2000s when you might bring half a new car every 6 weeks but as with all sports technology and knowledge compounds. Everything takes longer to make, needs more specialisation and costs more as a result meaning the ability to iterate the suspension ever 6 weeks is pretty much worthless if it takes 6 months, 10million and 2 months production after that to come up with a new suspension design. It's not seeing the forest for the trees that is so common with older companies that can't adapt to new ways of doing things. F1 is LONG past the time where you can bring a Mclaren that is absolutely dire to early 2009 and bring a nearly new car in the second half of the season let alone being able to bring a new engine/gearbox/suspension every few weeks as years before that. F1 design has become long, slow iterative and expensive and you have to ignore how things were done even 5 years ago let alone 30 years ago and do what's best for the team.

Taking Merc gearboxes, taking every piece they could get, maximising their budget and bringing in modern, highly experience technical people was the way forward and instead they have a marketing head trying to keep the company working as it did in it's heyday.

If they find someone willing to buy who wants to keep Frank and Claire heavily involved I'll be highly surprised. Figureheads sure, probably can find someone willing to call it Williams McNewcompany, but a new company needs a modern management team and to clean house.

[PlatinumZealot]

There is always so much talk about Williams gearbox and how it is outdated and so on. Do you have any source for that 20 kg overweight remark? Because much is written about it but I haven't read one single reliable info in recent past about it being overweight by such extent. (By reliable info I mean that it comes from a person with recent F1 technical experience.)

I also used to be skeptical about the large weight savings claimed for carbon vs. aluminum. However, there was a Racecar Engineering article many years ago that gave gearbox weights for different types of construction. The differences were indeed around 10-20 kg for carbon vs. aluminum!

Fully detailed FEA of gearboxes has been normal for a long time, so I doubt the aluminum box has reduced its weight penalty since them. If anything, carbon has probably lost additional weight due to more experience and more sophisticated construction techniques.

So yes, the Williams team are carrying around the equivalent extra mass of two bowling balls at back of their car. And they stick to it with apparently no intention to go carbon.

Sort of contradicts with statements by williams themselves.

It seems you are refering to old articles from the year 2000!



Previous dicsussions

viewtopic.php?t=27914&start=75

Enstone had some comments on their previous titanium box but I will have to do a search.

[Morteza]

An interesting article on the-race.com
An ex-Williams insider's view on the team's mistakes

[coaster]

Claire Williams did an interview on youtube just now, staying positive, keeping a steady hand. Hopefully the sponsorship hits with a blinding flash and crissis averted.

[Fulcrum]

Claire Williams did an interview on youtube just now, staying positive, keeping a steady hand. Hopefully the sponsorship hits with a blinding flash and crissis averted.

She'd keep a stiff upper lip well after hitting the iceberg, so to speak.

[Tattoo-]

Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel...