What Williams is learning from its worst car

You might expect a Formula 1 team struggling as badly as Williams to want the season to end right now. With the most uncompetitive car in the team's history, a single fortuitous point and little hope of adding significantly to that in the second half of the year, the rest of 2019 surely seems futile.

But the notion a team in this situation can write off the campaign and turn its attention to a clean sheet of paper for next year is a foolish one. The Williams FW42 is now effectively an experimental car that is inextricably linked not only to the evolutionary 2020 machine, but also the prospects for F1's rules revolution of the following year.

Bad seasons are an opportunity to learn, to interrogate your working practices, tools, assumptions, data analysis and all the elements that contribute to making an F1 car. That doesn't mean a poor car is either a good thing or a guarantee of fixing your problems - if it was then this year would have been vastly improved for Williams after last year's debacle, which also led to plenty of soul searching - but it does expose your weaknesses. Those at Williams have been laid bare.

F1 cars are not the product of chance, they are the result of the combined input of the systems, leadership decisions, processes and tools that have driven the process. The performance of the 2019 Williams is proof that the mechanisms producing it have fallen short, a failure of the science underpinning the car. While the high-profile change is the departure of chief technical officer Paddy Lowe, to fix the problem requires more than just a change of leadership.

As McLaren has proved with its dramatic turnaround, enacted by a team of individuals who are largely unchanged despite some changes at leadership level, it is possible to emerge from a period even in the most brutal wilderness in a stronger position. Having not made the most of the opportunity to learn enough from what went wrong last year, perhaps through being in denial of the extent of the troubles, those at Williams are determined not to repeat that failure.

As Williams chief engineer of vehicle programme Adam Carter explains, this requires the self-discipline to focus less on improving the car - although that is happening as well - and more on examining the systems that produced it.

"The biggest challenge is that you can continue to turn the handle on the machine that you've got, or effectively you have to stop the machine and reconfigure it and set it going again," he says.

One thing Williams can't claim is its problems aren't in plain sight. It's critical that lessons have been learned already and corrective measures put in place given the long lead time of the 2021 project

"In this industry things are constantly evolving and you're in competition and you have to make a conscious decision to stop, rebuild and then start going again for the greater potential and opportunity afterwards."

This strategy is correct because of the opportunity presented by 2021. While the 2019/20 Williams cars were always regarded as a two-year project given rules continuity, the new regulations offer Williams a chance to take a step forward. That's what makes the process of internal analysis that is currently ongoing so vital if it is to avoid the unedifying sight of it becoming a perennial tail-end Charlie.

It's not an easy task given the scale of the problem. The downforce level of the car is inadequate, no surprise given that is the overwhelming dictator of performance, and this was an area that was supposed to have been corrected based on the problems of 2018. There are also wider systemic concerns, specifically those that led to the car being late to testing and the occasional tendency for aero parts to shake themselves off the car.

But the level of scrutiny of these problems means that they can be solved. For teams that are being successful, there's a tendency not to look too closely at these areas and sometimes weaknesses can be obscured until they are laid bare in a disastrous car. One thing Williams cannot claim is that many of its problems are not in plain sight. It is critical that the lessons have been learned already and corrective measures put in place given the long lead time of the 2021 project.

"That's where all the work on the tools and the correlation becomes important," says Williams principal engineer Dave Robson (pictured below, right, in 2017). "Life preparing for 2021 is going to be very different in how it will look and how it will evolve. You're fundamentally still dealing with the different problems, just with different restrictions.

"It's important that we understand what we're going to achieve and how we're going to achieve it. If you've got a very strong toolkit and a very strong process, if you get a different problem and use that toolkit and process you can deliver a solution. Whereas if your process and toolkit is optimised to a certain situation, then you change the regulations, change the design criteria, then your confidence in that toolkit transferring over is going to be much less.

"That's why if you're at the top level and the regulations change, [big teams] have such a strong toolkit that they still come out on top. Not only do they have more resources but they can change things and they can still deliver. That attributes to why they're strong now as well, at that finite end of the development scope, because they can keep eking out the performance.

"That's absolutely part of the journey now, we have to arm ourselves and have an arsenal of really good tools and processes so we can unleash it on the 2021 regs. And actually have confidence rather than expectations and hope that it will transfer."

This might sound like making the best of a bad job, explaining why despite things looking terrible that good work is actually going on behind the scenes. But it's far from an excuse and is encouraging to hear for the majority of motorsport fans who find the sight of one of F1's legendary teams struggling to be unedifying.

Teams and drivers alike often talk of the lessons learned in the bad times being critical to laying the foundations for later success. While ideally you would be on top and stay there indefinitely, meaning such an intensive period of what might be termed technical introspection is unnecessary, it is an opportunity that isn't presented to all teams.

"If you're in a complacent position and you're almost knocking on the door, the ability to stop and take stock and actually maybe have to stop and go again to make that final step is very difficult," says Carter. "Because of the fear of falling back.

"If you're fourth, fifth, or sixth, how are you going to make that next step? Do you just turn the handle faster on that machine or do you have to change it up? To a certain extent, falling back and having the difficult seasons we've had allows us to explore that."

"If you're fourth, fifth, or sixth, how are you going to make that next step? To an extent, falling back and having the difficult seasons we've had allows us to explore that" Adam Carter

But none of this means that the on-track performance has been forsaken entirely. The car will improve as a result of these improved processes and it remains a real-world test bed for learning. Williams has made tangible progress this season, which suggests that it has at least been partially successful in tackling its failings.

While still the least competitive car despite George Russell's Hungaroring heroics, it has closed from, on average, 4.459% off the pace over the first four races to 3.797% in the latest four. More importantly, the gap to the back of the midfield has closed from 2.534% to 1.429% using the same comparison points. While gains are easier to make when you are so far behind, Williams is at least not floundering.

"Everything we're doing now applies for next year but crucially it's about building that base to attack 2021," says Robson. "If we just spent '19 and '20 slowly evolving the '18 car then we would have missed out on an awful lot.

"It has been frustrating and a bit painful but I think there are signs that we're heading in the right direction. Certainly we're learning the right things."

Above all, Williams exists to go racing. It's admirable that the team keeps plugging away making the best of its situation and the need to get the best out of what it has on track remains a driving force. It's also a reminder that the car does have some good qualities and that many of the components and systems within it are working well despite its overall lack of pace. Retaining the hidden strengths and correcting the weaknesses is what this process is all about.

"Going racing gives pace and purpose to the programme," says Carter. "The whole notion of writing off a season is very damaging. If you're going racing it keeps that pace and progress of learning, it forces the delivery of the next building blocks of learning.

"I'm also very aware that we have a finite number of opportunities to do our experiments and correlation. So however difficult it is, it's really important to be competing, to go racing, because that actually drives the process. That's what we do. And we can't lose sight of that."

Time will tell whether Williams really is learning the lessons of the many mistakes and weaknesses that have combined to create the worst car in its history. But the attitude is correct, the opportunity has been recognised and the rhetoric is exactly as it should be.

It's too early to say that the green shoots of recovery are clear to see, but Williams has the means, motive and opportunity to make this terrible season the roots of a revival in 2021. And it must.