Why the optimism is real for Williams' latest fresh start

Formula 1's unexpectedly protracted off-season has been painful for many of the teams, but for Williams in particular the resumption of racing couldn't come soon enough. Declining performance in recent years - and the attendant shrinkage of its prize fund share - meant the team was already under considerable financial pressure when the payments from title sponsor ROKiT abruptly ceased in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Williams didn't get to become the second most successful F1 team of all time in terms of championship wins by being soft, cuddly, or in any way a pushover. So, its response was quintessentially hard-nosed and unsentimental: it publicly gave ROKiT the rocket and came out fighting. Sir Frank Williams might have moved aside from the day-to-day management of affairs, but the business that bears his name also proudly carries his pugnaciously indefatigable stamp.

To that end the Williams cars rolled out of the garages for round one in Austria with an entirely new livery, banishing the erstwhile sponsor to the archives. But besides applying a new coat of paint, the team has also had to think the previously unthinkable: a potential sale of part or all of the business.

Giving up that much equity in the family firm has never been on the table before, and it's a measure of how much coronavirus has challenged long-established companies to adapt and innovate. It's likely, though, that the income crunch after a disappointing 2019 campaign - Robert Kubica claimed the team's solitary point with tenth in Germany - would have nudged Williams in this direction anyway.

"Certainly at the tail end last year, we were already thinking about going down that route of bringing in or attracting inward investment," confirms deputy team principal Claire Williams. "We knew that was coming. And then obviously a number of issues conspired against us this year which accelerated and broadened what we would need to do.

"Our family has always put the team first. And most importantly, Frank always has and always will do the right thing by the team. So, there are a number of opportunities open to us. And actually it's been an interesting process, something that's obviously new to me.

"We've got some very interested parties who could potentially be really valuable partners to us. And whether that is partners in the truest sense of the word, i.e. they come in and work with us as a minority shareholder, or if it ends up as a full sale, we have to go through the process and we have to see.

McKiernan and Robson, both ex-McLaren, took the decision not to throw resources at pursuing yet another new car concept for 2020, but to maximise their understanding of the troubled FW42 and evolve it

"I'd have been disappointed if we hadn't received good interest from good people, because Williams is a great team. It's got a fantastic legacy as a great brand."

Over the past few seasons Williams has felt like an organisation trapped in a transitional phase, undergoing restructure after restructure. When Paddy Lowe arrived as chief technical officer in 2017 there was talk of change - even of moving the aero department to be in closer proximity to the rest of the design group - and yet performance continued to drift. Arguably the problems deepened with the switch to a new car concept for 2018 which demonstrated deep-seated correlation problems between track and windtunnel data.

And gaps remained - for almost two years after Ed Wood's departure the chief designer role remained untenanted, for instance. When last year's FW42 arrived late to testing and had to be redesigned ahead of the season opener, several major components having been declared illegal by the FIA, Lowe's fate was sealed and he departed soon after. The car was never quick, for it was too deficient in downforce to get the most out of the tyres, and yet it was also too draggy to enjoy decent straight-line performance.

Lowe has never been replaced directly and his duties have been fulfilled by design director Doug McKiernan and head of vehicle performance Dave Robson, both ex-McLaren. They took the decision not to throw resources at pursuing yet another new car concept for 2020, but to maximise their understanding of the troubled FW42 and evolve it.

And while it's too early to categorically say that approach has worked, the signs have been positive so far: the FW43 arrived on time and ran well in testing, then George Russell qualified nearly 0.8s faster in the season opener than he did at the same circuit last year, only narrowly missing Q2 - a threshold it laboured to reach, let alone cross, in 2019.

In wet qualifying for the subsequent Styrian GP, Russell did make Q2, while Nicholas Latifi might have followed suit but for two yellow flags and a red interrupting his hot laps. Then, at the Hungarian GP last time out, both cars made it through to Q2 for the first time since the 2018 Italian Grand Prix.

"The car is a bit better - both the way it works the tyres, the way the drivers can exploit it," says Robson. "I think it's just a little bit better everywhere. Primarily from our side the aerodynamics are improved over last year."

Williams now describes the restructuring process as "complete". While Lowe's chief technical officer role hasn't been filled, former Red Bull deputy chief designer David Worner joined as chief designer in January, followed by Jonathan Carter (ex-Renault) as head of design.

Perhaps most significantly for an outfit once perceived as being in some disarray, Simon Roberts has recently started as managing director, overseeing F1 operations. Roberts comes highly regarded from McLaren. These recruits will take time to make their influence felt, but the impression is that this is now a team heading in the right direction again, competitively speaking.

"What we've said over the winter," says Claire Williams, "was we wanted to show we had made progress, that we had learned from the mistakes we've made over the past two years. We've wholly restructured the organisation across every area.

"And I know that in Austria, everybody kind of almost breathed a sigh of relief that we had demonstrated that. It just felt great to go racing. 
I can't tell you what it felt like for all of us, coming to every weekend knowing we would probably qualify last, and that we would probably finish the race last. That's brutal for a team like us, a team that is so filled with people who love doing what they do - which is going motor racing."

The current terms of distribution are particularly vexing for independent teams such as Williams, since they were arrived at via a series of bilateral negotiations with Bernie Ecclestone in which the present top three teams were given preferential status

Two further off-track developments may also help Williams gather momentum in its journey towards recovery: a new Concorde Agreement, with a more equitable distribution of prize money (assuming the team can now accumulate more points), along with the soon-to-be imposed budget cap.

The current terms of distribution are particularly vexing for independent teams such as Williams, since they were arrived at via a series of bilateral negotiations with Bernie Ecclestone in which the present top three teams were given preferential status. Such were the levers Ecclestone was prepared to pull to shatter the alliance of teams that was threatening his power; it was a classic divide-and-rule tactic.

"Essentially, the whole set of new regulations are going to significantly help a team like ours," says Claire Williams. "And certainly the financial regulations. Even the original cost cap of $175m was a real positive for us, and now that's been bought down, we've still got some headroom within that.

"But it's certainly at the level that is going to be advantageous to us - and it's up to us to capitalise on that."

The coming months will be vital, then. If the putative new investors - described as "fairly serious people" by F1 managing director of motorsports Ross Brawn - complete, they'll need to work rapidly to understand what support the team needs, and if any lingering reasons for its recent underperformance remain. Latifi's father Michael, who owns a 10% stake in McLaren, also owns the company which played a key role in Williams' most recent round of refinancing; he is believed to be one of Brawn's 'serious people'.

Just as importantly, the team needs to deliver the goods on-track, which means securing the points that will unlock future revenue. For all the positive signs in qualifying - Russell getting in among the pack, Latifi being much closer to him than Robert Kubica was last year - the FW43 needs better race pace over what is likely to be a shorter season than the 15-18 races F1 is still hoping to stage.

"We've still got a load of races left," says Claire Williams, "and I know that we can still keep learning and still make progress."