Does Williams hold the aces?

The curry club is back. With the success of a Formula 1 team so dependent on how its individuals come together, a great spirit within a squad can often provide the catalyst for some pretty sensational things.

Get the right collection of people in place, and the magic flows. Just look at Williams.

If you wanted to single out one team that has landed on its feet in 2014 - through a combination of hard work, good fortunes and others getting it wrong - then you need look no further than Williams.

How smart do the boys and girls at Grove look after making the switch from Renault to Mercedes? And how satisfied must they be to have the bright talent of Valtteri Bottas alongside the vastly experienced Felipe Massa?

How relieved are they to have got rid of the frustrations surrounding Pastor Maldonado without his departure actually hurting their finances much? And how excited must they be to know that they have a hugely ramped-up technical structure under the wise guidance of Pat Symonds?

The good news has kept rolling in, with a host of top-quality staff joining over the winter.

Symonds and Nelson with Flavio Briatore at Benetton © LAT

One of those has been the hugely respected Rod Nelson from Lotus, as the team's new chief test and support engineer.

His arrival marks the reunion of a triumvirate with Symonds and chief designer Ed Wood.

"It's great to be back with Pat and Ed; we were all at Benetton so it's very good," said Nelson.

"We're curry club us three; we go for a curry every three months and have a bit of a boys' night. It's very nice..."

The mojo that comes from that kind of bonding should not be underestimated.

And neither can having the kind of engineering brainpower that deputy team principal Claire Williams worked hook and crook to convince to come to Grove and turn the team around.

Before the 2014 generation of F1 cars had left the factories to head to Jerez, one senior engineer from a rival operation suggested that the start of the campaign would be the perfect stomping ground for some of F1's 'wise old men' such as Symonds to really shine in delivering a solid car that would produce results.

It was no surprise, then, that the early indications from the FW36 on display at the Jerez test were positive - it lapped pretty reliability and was swift too. The smile radiating from Massa could not be wiped away.

And yet it was from under the skin, and in the power-unit data figures, that perhaps the most impressive piece of news emerged.

Could superior cooling lift Williams to the front of the pack? © XPB

This is a year when cooling is going to be important for success, and Red Bull showed at Jerez exactly what happens when you get it wrong.

One of the eye-opening suggestions from Jerez was that the most impressive cooling figures out of all the Mercedes teams were not being produced by the cars from Brackley.

Instead, they were from those blue machines. Things could be very interesting, then, when the temperatures hot up at the start of the season.

That may prove to be a new dawn for Williams, with brighter things on the horizon too, for before the campaign gets underway there's likely to be a further double dose of good news.

On the staffing side, Rob Smedley's arrival when he is finally released from his Ferrari contract will be a boon to further bolster the brainpower.

And in terms of finances - and delighting fans with what could become the best paint scheme on the grid - a title sponsorship deal with Martini Racing is set to be announced before the start of the season.

That will be a huge statement of intent about why Williams is back.

Curry and Martini have never been typical bedfellows. But in 2014, they could well be a recipe for Williams success.