Killing crisis at Williams, and wrong Williams In Charge

The name Williams in Motor racing terms stirs a lot of emotions, and it goes back all the way to 1977. This was also the team which pioneered some best of the innovations every formula 1 team is using day in day out. Depending on your age your mind may hark back to the Red 5 of Mansell and his many near misses, Ayrton Senna’s fateful 1994 adventure, Damon Hill’s loss at the hands of Schumacher or even his win against Villeneuve a couple of years later. It may be the BMW years with Montoya and the other Schumacher fighting for wins and championships? Or the right back to the days of Jones or Rosberg (SNR). Fact is, the Williams team racing heritage is filled with chapters of drama, intrigue and incredible results.

The crisis seems like an incredible choice of words, especially from me. This isn’t a clickbait, but a neutral view of an outsider about the company perhaps. In fact, I couldn’t think of another word that truly describes the situation this team finds itself in.

Let's look at where they stand currently, in FP1 and FP2 at the 2019 Australian GP both cars were slowest by a long way. Which correlates with the pace seen in the week and a half in Barcelona’s testing standings.

In fact, the team needed help from other teams just to ensure they had 2 physically complete cars ready for the Friday’s running such are the dire delays coming from the factory. This of course after turning up mid-way through the first pre-season test with an incomplete and illegal car.

The team also suffers from a massive lack of funding, and of course, lack of funding directly correlates with the surviving ability of the team. A title sponsor with no money or product to speak of (although Williams is not exclusive in that regard), the loss of the Strolls money, Martini sponsorship & Bottas compensation and of course finishing last means you get the least money from the FOM causing massive headaches for the budget of the team.

You also have to note the departure of Paddy Lowe for ‘personal reasons’. The loss of Rob Smedley and a host of members of staff over the last 12 months. All-in-all with all these combined you can see why the word crisis fits.

A lot of these issues points to poor management, from the perspective of racing or money management or just simply logistics. The buck stops with Claire Williams and all of these issues have appeared on her watch.

By not being manufacturer-owned or with an own engine division Williams found itself betwixt and between: Larger than the satellites, yet smaller than the major teams, all of whom have wealthy owners, be they car brands or drinks companies. Thus Williams is neither satellite nor mothership, yet, crucially, carries all the overheads of the latter while not having access to parent company funding.

Heck, Williams still builds its own gearboxes — with aluminium casings…

F1’s commercial environment, too, changed massively over the past decade: Eyeballs dropped 30 per cent as a pay-TV bit, compounded by new-gen viewer patterns and switch-offs due to increasing domination by the ‘Big Three’. Sponsorship revenues went south — forcing Williams to sign so-called pay drivers, with Maldonado being the first, but not the last. Where once sponsors were blue-chip, now they’re start-ups.

All the while the Big Three, against whom Williams had once fought so valiantly, pulled bonuses that alone substantially exceed Grove’s performance-based income. Exploding costs, inequitable earnings in the face of an ongoing global economic crisis and a stale business model could only spell one thing: regression. Consider the number of teams that disappeared or restructured since 2012: seven, including three start-ups…

Worse (for Williams): in the five years since the discriminatory revenue structure was introduced no team outside the top three — the primary beneficiaries of F1’s obscene bonuses — has won a race.

Thus, where once the legendary Williams team was once spoiled for choice having the pick of Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost, last year’s line-up saw a toss-up between Sergey Sirotkin and Robert Kubica for the ‘other’ berth, with Lawrence Stroll’s billions covering the primary seat for son Lance.

Just as most ailments creep up rather than strike without warning, so the team’s slide did not occur abruptly. There have, though, been occasional bright spots, but mostly these flattered to deceive — and the team is now paying a heavy price for such deceptions. Once the competitive order was properly shaken out, it was clear Williams had been left on the wrong side of all F1’s divides.

Is Williams truly a 10th-place team, its championship placing last year and ranking during recent pre-season testing? On facilities, personnel, dedication and commitment — certainly not. Is it a front-runner? Equally negative. Midway? Well, its average championship classification over the past five years is fifth…

Given the company’s listed status the full story to technical director Paddy Lowe’s “leave of absence” is unlikely to emerge and will ultimately be subject to non-disclosure clauses. But his departure is stepped in the right direction if for no other reason than the chemistry between employer and employee seemed lacking. Yes, Paddy started his F1 career with Williams, but a return to an old relationship is not always constructive.

In the short term, there is likely to be a temporary allocation of responsibilities to existing senior staff while the company restructures the technical division.

There is simply too much potential within the Grove campus for Williams to follow fellow multiple champions such as Lotus, Cooper and Brabham into oblivion. But, in order to survive, Williams needs to reinvent itself and embrace the future rather than clinging nostalgically to the past. Times have changed, Williams has not, certainly not enough in its key performance areas.

The team must decide whether it wishes to be a family-run listed company or a top-performing engineering company managed by professionals who in turn delegate race team operations to seasoned racing professionals. Again, it is betwixt and between.

Equally, it needs to decide whether to be a healthy satellite or weak constructor, regardless of the founder’s principles that F1 teams can survive as chassis constructors powered by outside engines and fed by strong sponsorship and equitable performance revenues. That model is dead, as attested to by the satellites, all of whom finished 2018 well ahead of Williams.

The record shows that the only other team to have operated to that model last year was McLaren, which went private after its divorce from Mercedes, yet needed shareholder injections of $100m last year simply to survive. That speaks volumes about both states of F1, and the inner core strength of Williams.

That the team has survived at all in the face of the raft of challenges outlined above bears testimony to the steely determination of Sir Frank, who in turn instilled it in all the dedicated men and women who toil daily in search of results despite F1’s shifting sands. Indeed, the innate stubbornness Williams is well known and respected for and which ultimately propelled it to such heights is partly the reason for its refusal to adapt.

The inescapable fact is, though, that F1’s sands have shifted faster than Williams recognised to date, and one fears that the team has one last chance: during the next two years it simply needs to adapt; not, though, to the current Formula 1, for it is too late for that, but to the model, Liberty plans to introduce from 2021. The issue is that no one, not even Liberty, yet knows what that landscape looks like.

That could be Williams’s saving grace. But only if the changes mean that all teams start the new era from zero.