Williams's quiet revolution

Twelve minutes into Friday practice in Baku, disaster strikes. A loose drain cover destroys the floor of George Russell's Williams. The misery is compounded when the crane on the flatbed truck returning the car to the pits hits a bridge, causing hydraulic fluid to leak all over the car. "It never rains, but it pours at Williams this year," sighs deputy team principal Claire Williams.

The team missed the first days of testing back in February because the 2019 car wasn't ready in time. It was blamed on a "manufacturing backlog," and shortly afterwards chief technical officer Paddy Lowe took a leave of absence. His departure from the team was finally confirmed just after the French Grand Prix.

This year Williams heads to every race knowing it will be the slowest in the field. It is bottom in the constructors' championship with just a single point on the board - and that was inherited via penalties ahead.

It's a sad state of affairs but, fear not, the idea this is the beginning of the end is 
wrong. There is a plan under way to restore Williams to the glory days.

The roots of the current problems have been poor technical leadership and questionable driver choice, combined with an outdated code of engineering practice. This hasn't happened overnight - it's been an issue for a number of seasons. But hitting rock bottom has highlighted weaknesses that were not immediately obvious.

Rewind five years to the start of the hybrid era and Williams was third in the constructors' championship for two consecutive seasons. It had a prestigious title sponsor (Martini), the best engine available (Mercedes), and two quick drivers (Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas), and used those assets to achieve its best result since 2003.

There followed two fifth places in the standings, until last year's dramatic fall from grace. Tenth and last overall with drivers Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin.

Claire Williams has since admitted that a plan should have been executed during the good times to avoid the current hardship.

There is an inevitable cycle of decline that starts as soon as a slip in performance occurs. That's because F1's commercial make-up hinders teams without manufacturer backing.
 A drop in the constructors' standings results in less all-important prize money. The knock-on effect for independent teams to redress the loss of income is to choose drivers who bring cash, but who may not be the last word in both speed and technical feedback - exacerbating the decline.

Under the technical leadership of Lowe (who joined from Mercedes in 2017), last season started poorly and in May Williams parted company with chief designer Ed Wood, and a month later, head of aero Dirk de Beer. Performance boss Rob Smedley also left at the end of 2018. None of them were replaced directly.

Ex-McLaren man Doug McKiernan was hired as chief engineer and internal recruitments were undertaken, but when the 2019 FW42 failed to be built in time for pre-season testing, Lowe's position was untenable. Since then co-founder Patrick Head has returned to Grove to help steady the ship.

"We have weaknesses in aerodynamics and a number of departments," says Williams. "And that's not in any way pointing our fingers at various groups because it's our responsibility as leaders of our business to ensure they are structured in the right way and they have what they need. It's not their job, it's ours.

"But they 
[the weaknesses] have become more apparent with what happened this year in testing. We perhaps needed to hit rock bottom to work out what those issues are. But we have a clear action plan which is in force and will come out over the 
next six months."

A good example of how Williams has lost its way is best explained by describing the team's engineering practice. It proudly builds every single aspect of the car that isn't the power unit or a prescribed standard part, such as the fuel tank.

For example, a small team of people work on designing and manufacturing the pedal box. This isn't an area of the car that offers any gain in performance (except perhaps by incremental savings in weight) and most other teams outsource their pedal boxes, buying the item outright, rather than paying a team of staff. This is a small example of where efficiencies and savings can be made and changes are now in the pipeline to restructure departments.

"We have always made everything in-house, jigs, fixtures - everything," says Williams. "It's in our DNA to make everything ourselves, regardless of how many parts there are.

"We need to change that mindset. What parts should or shouldn't we be making? What are the key performance differentiators? Should we be farming out aspects to experts? Can we make cost efficiencies as a result?

"That's the big work that is going on at Williams at the moment and can be powerful moving forward. We need to focus on what we're making and what we're good at making and concentrating our resources on what matters - and that's performance."

The ability to outsource so much of the car thanks to the 'listed parts' collaborations that have developed between teams, such as Ferrari and Haas, have also hurt this traditional engineering model.

"Because we make everything in house, that has probably cost us over the past couple of years," adds Williams. "Haas has half the workforce, but makes half the stuff. We've probably not been quick enough to respond to those circumstances, or we never had the foresight to see them coming and have been slow to react as a result."

While there is an acknowledgement that things need to change, the team is caught in limbo waiting for the 2021 technical regulations to be determined. In mid-June the FIA announced the regs would not be presented until late October. The delay is to prevent teams running three concurrent engineering programmes and to stop better resourced squads from gaining an advantage by doing so.

The downside is that delaying the announcement of the regulations means Williams can't immediately act on changing its internal structure. If greater collaboration between teams is allowed and the 'Haas model' is given greater freedom in the regulations, Williams can downsize its 700 employees accordingly. In contrast, on the other side of 'Motorsport Valley', Racing Point is also waiting on the rules, ready to upscale the operation with new premises if they go in a certain direction.

Williams adds that greater financial restrictions, such as a cost cap and a more equitable distribution of prize fund, will put the team in a much stronger position and would reduce the need to find drivers to help with a shortfall in budget. To the team's credit, it has found a new title sponsor this year, in Rokit, and has a profitable side business in Williams Advanced Engineering.

Aside from the future direction of F1 and the redistribution of income, Williams reiterates that technical leadership must be prioritised on the most important aspect of the operation: The car. The focus of design, engineering and assembly needs to be on aspects that improve performance above all else.

"We know what the problems are and we know how to fix them," she says. "I feel there is light and there is more focus on the car and how it's performing at the track. It's very easy to lose that focus with a big workforce who predominantly don't go to races and they just see their bit in isolation, such as tunnel numbers or the simulator - that's not going to work. Nothing else matters more than lap time."

While the FW42 is still at the back of the grid, performance gains have been made since 
the start of the season and they are continuing with every race.

"I do feel there is a mindshift at Williams so people are focused on the car. Where we qualify, where we finish the race, how quickly we're lapping - that's all anyone should care about. What are the drivers telling us about the car, the brakes, steering? That's what needs to be fixed. Progress is being made and you'll see that over the coming months."

In its young British driver George Russell, Williams has a future star in the making. His performances against Robert Kubica have been impressive and he is diligent, smart and offers good technical feedback, despite his inexperience.

Kubica, too, is extremely determined and pushes the team to extract the maximum performance from the car. It's not the easiest season for this once great team, but there is no desire from Williams or the senior management to do anything but try to turn fortunes around. With a reset in so many areas for the team, this is the nadir from which it should start to rise again.

"Heading to every race knowing you're going to be last is difficult," adds Williams. "Yet it feels like we're a start-up now with new drivers, a new sponsor. But I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think we can come out the other side.

"This is why Williams is so loved. We don't give up when times are tough. We have always had difficult times but we keep going - we're in F1 because we love it."