Current Williams

Williams Grand Prix Engineering

FIA Entry: AT&T Williams
Car 11: Rubens Barrichello
Car 12: Pastor Maldonado
Engine: Cosworth V8
Team Principal: Frank Williams
Director of Engineering: Patrick Head
Technical Director: Sam Michael
Race Engineer Car 11: Tony Ross
Race Engineer Car 12: Tom McCullough

Stats as of end 2010

First Entered 1977
Races Entered 539
Race Wins 113
Pole Positions 126
Fastest Laps 130
Driver World Championships 7
Constructor World Championships 9

Team History

The Early Years

Like many team owners and principals Frank Williams started life as a driver and mechanic. Realising his ability as a driver wouldn't allow him to reach the levels he hoped Williams set up Frank Williams Racing Cars and in 1969 entered a Brabham chassis for Piers Courage. Through to 1976 Williams entered customer cars from other manufacturers before settings up Williams Grand Prix Engineering in 1977 with Patrick Head.

Williams Grand Prix Engineering

In 1977 Williams GPE entered a March 761 for Patrick Neve. In 1978 Patrick Head designed his first Williams car, the FW06, driven by Australian Alan Jones The car scored it's first points at the South African Grand Prix and Jones took Williams first podium at Long Beach, finishing 2nd behind Carlos Reutemann in a Ferrari.

In 1979 the FW07 chassis debuted and Williams had grown into a 2 car team with Clay Regazzoni joining Alan Jones. Regazzoni scored Williams first Grand Prix victory at Silverstone and Jones took another 4 victories that season. Continuing with the FW07(in A and B spec) in 1980 Jones, now partnered by Carlos Reutemann, won 6 races (5 for Jones and 1 for Reutemann) with Jones winning the drivers title and Williams the Constructors Championship.

With the FW07 in C & D spec Williams won 4 more races and again took the Constructors Championship in 1981 but missed out on the Drivers Title. Continuing with Cosworth power in 1982 Williams moved onto the FW08, a car originally designed as 6 wheeler, and Keke Rosberg joined Carlos Reutemann. Reutemann retired 2 races into the season and Mario Andretti stood in for a single race before Derek Daly permanently replaced Reutemann. Rosberg only managed a single win at the Swiss Grand Prix 1982 but it was enough for him to win the Drivers Championship.

Having driven for Frank Williams back in 1974 and 1975 Jacques Laffite partnered Keke Rosberg in 1983. Rosberg won the Monaco Grand Prix with Cosworth power and by the end of the season Williams had moved to Honda turbo power and the FW09 chassis. 1984 continued the pattern of 1 win per season for Rosberg and the Williams team with Keke taking first place in Dallas.

The Honda Era

Nigel Mansell joined Williams in 1985 and the team, still with Honda turbo engines, won 4 Grand Prix. Piquet replaced Rosberg for 1986 and between them Mansell and Piquet won 9 of the 16 races and Williams the Constructors Championship. 1987 saw another 9 victories for the team and another victory in the Constructors Championship as well as Piquet winning the Drivers Title

The departure of Honda as engine supplier and Piquet as a driver in 1989 saw Williams move temporarily to Judd engines and Mansell, now partnered by Riccardo Patrese, had a very lean season with their highest finish only 4th.

Renault Power

Williams secured Renault V10 power for 1989 and the next 9 season proved to be Williams most successful. They won 63 Grands Prix, 5 Constructors Championship (1992, 93, 94, 96 & 97) and 4 Drivers Titles (Mansell 92, Prost 93, Hill 96 and Villeneuve 97). Other winners for Williams in this period of dominance included Riccardo Patrese, Thierry Boutsen, Heinz Harald Frentzen and David Coulthard. This period was also touched by tragedy when Ayrton Senna lost his life in a Williams car at the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola in 1994

The withdrawal of Renault from F1 in 1998 moved Williams into another barren spell as the cars were powered by ageing Renault engines produced by Mecachrome (98) and Supetec (99).

BMW Williams

Williams changed to BMW V10 engines in 2000 and returned to the winners circle in 2001 with Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya at the wheel. The partnership with BMW continued until 2006 with Williams winning 10 Grands Prix and were runners up in the Constructors Championship in 2002 and 2003. Ralph Schumacher drove for Williams for 6 season and was partnered by Alex Zanardi, Jenson Button (debuting in F1 in 2000) and Montoya with Mark Gene and Antonio Pizzonia making occasional appearances as stand in drivers. BMW's final season with Williams saw Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld taking podiums but able to not challenge for wins.

Toyota Customer

A season of Cosworth power in 2006, with Mark Webber joined by F1 new boy Nico Rosberg, proved very unsuccessful and in 2007 Williams became customers of Toyota. As one of the few truly independent teams still competing in F1 Williams struggled to compete with the factory supported teams and were probably best categorised as "the best of the rest". Webber left at the end of 2007 and Rosberg, initially partnered by Alex Wurz and then by Toyota "works" driver Kazuki Nakajima, managed a highest finish of 2nd in Singapore 2008 with Williams finishing 4th, 8th and 7th in the Constructors Championship whilst using Toyota power.

In 2009 Williams sold a minority share in the company to an Austrian investment company led by Toto Wolff.

Williams Cosworth

In 2010 Williams returned to Cosworth engines and signed up Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg to drive for them. Hulkenberg took a surprising pole in changeable weather conditions in Brazil to give Williams their first such grid position since Nick Heidfeld in 2005. Although regular points finishers Williams weren't challenging for wins and finished the season 6th in Constructors Championship.

2011 sees Rubens Barrichello retain his seat at Williams with GP2 Champion Pastor Maldonado alongside him. They will continue with Cosworth engine power.
 
One swallow doesn’t make a summer.

Massa retired from the Azerbaijan GP, in which he would have scored 25 or 18 points. Stroll hasn’t retired whilst being in a point scoring position this season.
.

its not 1 swallow as I said if you include all 3 sections of qualy its 5+ swallows because as I said he got 9th in Canada, inches from 2nd in azerbajan 6th in mexico & front row in Monza. which was outstanding because more experienced drivers on that grid couldn't cope & yet on 3 separate occasion he was brilliant, you say miles off massa but in tricky conditions he beat his teammate with 250+ more grand prixs by 7 tenths 4tenths & 1.2secs

you cant bring up Azerbaijan GP, because everyone came away from that race saying that they could've won
if ocon had more patience force india would've been 1-2
Alonso & Magnussen couldve been on the podium,
vettel could've won if he didn't ram lewis,
lewis headrest hadnt come unstuck he would've won,
bottas hadn't hit kimi at t1, he would've won
Max hadn't had yet more engine issues he would've won

the fact is like I put above stroll kept his head when many more talented & experienced drivers couldnt
 
Massa unlike other drivers made no mistake in Azerbaijan though. He had no control over that situation. Conditio sine qua non; had Massa not suffered an engine failure, he would have finished 1st or 2nd.
 
neither did kimi getting hit by bottas & if max engine hadnt blown he wouldve won. you cant blame him for being there to pick the pieces up that way. many drivers in 80s didnt deserve the 5th or 6th places. or panis 96 monaco gp or even lmp2 cars at this seasons le mans. they got just because they just survived the aristion rate
 
So Kubica is the reserve and development driver and Sirotkin is the new Williams driver . Money before talent?
 
Williams got a very good driver in sergey sorotkin, Did well & impressed me in GP2 2016 but if i remember rightly crashing out of lead in feature ruined his weekend & couldnt retrieve deficit of double DNF. I think in the future he will be very similar to perez. Good driver that comes with money

Yes he comes with money, thats the state of f1 last decade still too many fans who are naive or rose tinted. Because prices have got more & more unsustainable ive said on a budget thread that the top 3 in this constructors championship collectively spent close to a billion. In a perfect world i would love drivers to get a drive on talent like Stoneman Markalov Rowland Bird Buemi (who is wasted in wec & formula e) or that GP2 champ gets the pick of midfield teams. But Williams have got to pay the bills somehow Until budgets come down to a force india level. Then This will keep happening & they have got to get used to it. I spoke on formula e thread that Rosenqvist is a driver i would like to see him in f1 in next 3 years but we all know that f1 is money over talent. You could be the next Ayrton Senna or Micheal Schumacher but if your a midfield team up against a guy with £30m youll miss out. Because talent & money is intergral
 
The article I saw said Sirotkin was the No.2 driver at Williams to partner Lance Stroll. I'm sure it was simply because he is the second driver to be confirmed otherwise it's not much of a confidence boost for the bloke to be No.2 to Stroll.
 
Well we will find out when Kubica gets practice runs how he compares with two drivers Williams have gone for ?

Clearly Kubica was employed to please Martini's desire for an over 25 year old driver.
 
Its all kicking off at Williams

Lance Stroll: I got no guidance from Felipe Massa in 2017 F1 season

Screenshot_20180203-214614.jpg
 
he will not miss having Felipe Massa as a team-mate, as he received 'no guidance whatsoever' from him during their time together at Williams

"I don't think I had any guidance from him last year, whatsoever, He was a team-mate like any other. He was busy trying to drive as fast as he could, & I was trying to drive as fast as I could. That was it. There was nothing more to it than that. I don't know why people seem to think there was a coach or a mentor thing going on. There wasn't, it was just him doing his job & me doing mine, & whoever did it better finished ahead.
 
He didn’t take any advice from a more experienced teammate? Then he’s simply completely up his own a**e and it probably explains why he was so slow.

Or is he saying he got no help, because he despite it he was still 1 Sec slower than Massa?

He has to prove himself against Sirotkin next season.
 
Unfortunately even if Lance Stroll gets thrashed by Sirotkin.. he will not get dropped .. he will only take his money to somewhere like Sauber or even Ferrari if Vettel does not perceive him as a threat
 
Rowland named Williams F1 young driver for 2018

Not sure what to make of this given he was part of the Renault young driver program and he battled Sirotkin in GP2 before . His chances getting into Williams as a full time driver are very slim given both drivers have got money behind them and Kubica is the reserve driver?

I thought he was the next driver lined up at Renault if they want to get rid of Hulkenberg or Sainz gets recalled to Red Bull... there is a chance Rowland's career could end the way like Sam Bird where he is being overlooked in F1 because other drivers have bigger wallets than him
 
Back
Top Bottom