Point to Prove

As is usual at this time of year, everyone is full of optimism, convinced that they've done the best job and got their sums right.

Of course, this year everyone has the benefit of the doubt. The engine capacity change from three litres V10 to 2.4l V8 has really thrown a spanner in the works, while the tyre war is being run to completely different rules to that of 2005. Those factors alone ensure that it really is impossible to say how things will work out over the course of a 19-race season, and even those hot, early races with unproven machinery won't tell the full story.

One of the final pieces of the puzzle comes to focus this week, when the Williams-Cosworth FW28 is unveiled at Grove. That car name and designation has a familiar ring to it, and one half expects to see the name Carlos Reutemann on the side. But we will of course see the name Rosberg, as Nico follows in father Keke's footsteps exactly 20 years after he left.

The Williams team of this season will be very different from the one we've grown used to. Frank Williams is now paying for his Cosworth engines, but on the other hand the weight of expectations created by the stressful years with BMW has been lifted. You might even say that the Williams team have been reborn as everybody's favourite underdog, eager to snap at the heels of the factory teams.

"Are we an underdog?" Sir Frank said with a straight face at the end of last year. When I listed the works teams that he would be lined up against, he was unrepentant. "We've beaten them all before, we'll do it again... Teams go up and down. We're convinced we'll come back. At what level we'll come back, only time will tell. We're still a robust team, and we'll fight."

You cannot look at the team's prospects for 2006 without referring back to last season and the unravelling of the partnership with BMW.

Three or four years ago it seemed certain that everything would fall into place and the Anglo-Bavarian alliance would topple Ferrari, but it never quite worked out that way. Inevitably, each side blamed the other for the overall performance, although in general the dirty washing was done behind closed doors.

A low was reached last year, when the team failed to win a race. The team have readily admitted that they got things wrong on the chassis side, although BMW has been rather slower to acknowledge any shortcomings.

Frank had his own succinct version of events: "The car wasn't quick enough, full stop. It's common to most teams that are not doing well - the car isn't quick enough!"

"The season was four letters, beginning with 'c' and ending in 'p'!" Patrick Head too exclaimed at the end of last year. "It was for us a very poor season. We started a bit on the back foot.

"It's not appropriate to say it was because of wind tunnel problems, because that casts aspersions on the wind tunnel, and it's just a tube of air. But with the new tunnel we weren't really ready, and we overestimated how ready we were to rely on it, and as a result of that broke down the old tunnel in order to convert it from a 50% model size to a 60% model size.

"So we found ourselves caught a bit betwixt and between. During the development of the FW27 we had very few genuine evaluation runs per day, but we worked very hard, and made considerable improvements with the car."

Indeed, the team did have some good results in the first half of the year, including that double podium in Monaco and Nick Heidfeld's run to second - from a tactically achieved pole - at the Nurburgring. Then, in the middle of the year it got worse, rather than better.

"Our focus was all on to the upgrade to the bodywork, which wasn't a huge aero upgrade, but it was 2-3% or something like that. I don't think any of us expected it to put us up the front, but we went to the French Grand Prix with that and were as bad as we'd ever been all year.

"The British GP, one week later, was just as bad, and that really was our low point of the year. Going back to the Mk1 spec really showed that the problem really was with the car, and not the specification. They were both bad.

"So we had a review of the way we were running the car and decided to take a different course. Even internally - although there's no confusion about how the decisions are made, and that once a decision is made we all go in that direction - there was quite a lot of disagreement about whether that decision to change was correct.

"The car did get better. I have to say tales of bad luck are rather tedious, but we had the potential to do better than we actually achieved in the second part of the season. At Monza the car was really pretty good, I would say the third best car behind the Renault and the McLaren, but we just didn't qualify well enough."

It certainly sounds as though Head and technical director Sam Michael had a handle on what needed to be done to improve things, and that surely bodes well for 2006, if the shortcomings have been addressed.

While there were some rays of sunshine last year, the fact is that BMW-Williams should have been a title contender, and they were far from that. The backdrop of the split with the engine partner was painful. Appropriately, perhaps, Frank Williams makes it sound like the breakdown of a marriage on the grounds of incompatibility.

"We tried very hard to make it work, and so did BMW," he says. "But there was probably a bit of a culture problem. Obviously BMW always wanted to have their own team and go their own way. Not that this affected what they were directly trying to do with us, but it may have distracted them in the background. We gradually just drifted apart, sadly."

That's all history now, but it does help to give this season a fascinating subtext. BMW motorsport director Dr. Mario Theissen admits that comparisons between BMW-Sauber and Williams will be "interesting," and no doubt Frank and Patrick think the same.

Then there's the question of Jenson Button. Logic suggests that he made the right decision, but would you put money on Honda being ahead of Williams at every race this year? The days that Button isn't will no doubt generate a few smiles. Equally, the spurned Cosworth will be keen to see how Red Bull Racing fares with its new partner, Ferrari.

Of course, if you're going to radically alter your package, sometimes it doesn't hurt to do it when there's a major rules change, as all of your rivals have new stuff to deal with as well. But Williams really have had a tough job this winter, as so much is new.

"I'm excited about the challenge," Patrick noted as he looked at what lay ahead. "I have to say there's a certain element of fear and trepidation there as well, when you think we've got new tyres, a new engine, a new seamless shift gearbox. The test car for November and December only ran the seamless shift, only ran Bridgestone tyres, and only ran the Cosworth engine. We couldn't say, 'there's our V10 standard car; we'll test the tyres on that'.

"Sitting in the garage looking through gearbox shrapnel or engine associated problems will not be good for us. Meanwhile, while there are question marks over us as a team, I think we'll have answers to that. It's important for us. Undoubtedly, we'll have to cut our cloth more leanly than in the past, but we're a strong unit, and we'll manage to do that."

Allowing for all the technical novelties, and of course the arrival of a relatively inexperienced driver in Nico Rosberg, it's not been too bad a winter so far. The Cosworth V8, as expected, appears to be pretty useful straight out of the box. The question remains, how will the company be able to match the development pace of such as Honda, Toyota and BMW, once they start upping the ante?

Longer term, Williams have, supposedly, other engine plans for 2007, but for the moment Frank Williams is pleased with what he's got. "It was the obvious way to go," he said. "It was an affordable engine which seems to have a lot of horsepower, and geography. We're 60 miles apart. And like us, they've got a lot to prove. We depend on and need each other."

The joker in the pack could yet prove to be Bridgestone. When the team's move was announced late last year, it appeared to be a throw of the dice, although arguably Williams had less to lose than Toyota. Mark Webber was hardly jumping up and down at the prospect of being on the wrong tyres in what was clearly going to be a make-or-break season for him.

But then came the return of tyre changes, a development that Frank Williams must have been hoping for when he jumped ship, but surely could not have guaranteed would go through, whatever political machinations were going on in the background.

"We felt that there were a lot of Michelin teams for them to take care of, and that we might be well taken care of [by Bridgestone]. Whatever I say will praise one and embarrass the other. It was a technical decision, and we'll try and make it work."

The team have a fascinating package for 2006, and the arrival of Alex Wurz as their test and reserve driver has added another dimension. But what of the longer term?

A few years ago, the thought of Frank Williams and Patrick Head (who owns 30% of the Williams team) ever selling up seemed highly unlikely, but neither man is getting any younger. You might think that the hassle of having to make the books balance without a free engine might just tip the balance, but I would suspect that the challenge of proving a point might have had the opposite effect, and in some way recharged their batteries.

"The first remark I would make," smiles Frank, "Is that Patrick and I are wise enough to realise that you should never say never. But we have no plans to sell at this time. If Patrick wants to sell his shares, then he can sell them. But I think you'll find Patrick is more of a racer than me. As long as we enjoy it... It's like Bernie [Ecclestone]. What is he, 77 or something? The fire is still blazing in his belly."

But even Frank concedes that one day, he'll have to take a step back.

"There are two converging lines. One is when I arrive at that point, and two when the people around me say, 'come on Frank, you've reached the point'..."

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- The Autosport.com Team

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