The real secret of F1 success

Amid the current frenzy of cost-cutting talk, money is seen as everything in Formula 1, be it the root of all evil or the secret of success.

But while it might be the former, it isn't the latter. Financial might is a pre-requisite of winning championships, but history has proved time and time again that it is no guarantee of it.

Myriad factors make the difference between success or failure. Pouring cash into facilities and personnel with good CVs is just part of the equation.

Williams is a good example. While it's not the powerhouse team it once was, over the past 17 years it has tended to underachieve. But this relative failure has not taken the same form every year.

In 2013, it had a bad car and scored only five points. The year before, it had a good, competitive car that regularly started at the sharp end, yet finished eighth in the constructors' championship.

This year had started to resemble 2012 early on, with a quick car rarely rewarded with the results it was capable of.

The Australian GP set the tone. Once Lewis Hamilton had retired, it would have been possible for both Williams to finish on the podium but for Valtteri Bottas slapping the wall (before eventually recovering to fifth) and Felipe Massa being torpedoed by a brake-less Kamui Kobayashi at the start.

Williams was back on the podium in Austria © XPB

But in Austria a week-and-a-half ago, Williams delivered by locking out the front row (largely down to Mercedes not making the most of its qualifying pace advantage) and finishing third and fourth. While some criticised it as conservative, it was exactly what the team needed.

There are myriad reasons why Williams has taken such a big stride forward, but there is one aspect that stands as essential for any successful team.

The epithet 'straight-talking' is often appended to the name of Rob Smedley, the team's head of vehicle performance who joined the team in time for April's Bahrain GP. It's easy to mistake that as a throwaway reflection of his personality, but it's more revealing than that.

If things go wrong, he's happy to admit them. He avoids scapegoating and does not shirk taking responsibility for failures on his watch. In public, he faces criticism, doesn't sugar coat it and at key moments is careful to protect those who others might hang out to dry. Behind closed doors, the focus is on understanding and fixing problems rather than hounding those who made the errors.

It's a similar story for chief technical officer Pat Symonds. He had every chance to talk up what Williams has achieved this season, but was quick to highlight how things should have been better. And by doing that in a constructive way, they will be.

F1 teams are huge and complicated organisations comprising multiple departments, all of which need to cohere in order to achieve their potential. Human nature being what it is, such teams are ripe for becoming mired in politics.

There is a fine line to be trodden. If mistakes are ignored and those responsible for them not made to correct their working practices, they will be repeated. But this doesn't mean that errors should be punished, merely recognised.

Create a culture of scapegoating, where individuals are blamed for certain shortcomings, and you create an environment in which department heads are more interested in deflecting blame onto others than correcting problems.

And as problems are more often the result of a confluence of factors rather than down to one specific thing, that approach will rarely get to the heart of the issue and blunders will be repeated.

Aldo Costa, now at Mercedes © XPB

This is an area where Red Bull proved so successful during its four years of dominance. The secret to its success was not just recruiting Adrian Newey, it was creating an environment where he could thrive and a team in which bold ideas could be pursued without fear.

The reverse of this has regularly proved the Achilles Heel of teams that should have thrived.

Look at Mercedes. It's a team that is, based on current results, cohesive and very effective. But look back to its pre-Brawn GP incarnations as BAR and Honda and some of those who worked there tell of an intensely political environment that got in the way of being successful.

It's also worth noting that one of the key senior technical figures at Mercedes has been Aldo Costa, deemed surplus to requirements at Ferrari just over three years ago.

While his role at Mercedes is a little different, engineering director rather than technical director, that's symptomatic of the kind of counter-productive blood-letting that has regularly dogged Ferrari over the decades. Imagine if that had happened a couple of years into the Jean Todt/Michael Schumacher/Ross Brawn/Rory Byrne project when championship success proved elusive...

While individuals can prove unsuited to their jobs and be legitimately shipped out, this can too often shroud real problems. While the weakness of the 2014 engine has added to Ferrari's woes this year, you just have to look at this and this to realise that other weaknesses have not effectively been addressed.

Inevitably, it is when teams are struggling that the cracks appear and politics can take over as individuals strive to save their jobs. So you could argue that cause and effect are being confused here. But there is plenty of evidence of the dangers of an environment in which the fear of being blamed for something is more powerful than the need to address problems.

Mistakes will be made, as even those megastar names with giant salaries are only human and therefore fallible. What matters is how you react to errors. If the team culture prizes excuses and deflection of responsibility over all else, results will suffer.

F1 teams cannot operate with a blame culture. But what might be termed a 'responsibility culture' where problems are addressed in a frank and open way without fear is just as important as budget when it comes to a grand prix team thriving.

Nobody likes to fail. But if the fear of failure overwhelms the desire for success, the result is always mediocrity.