The heat has been oppressive here in Hungary and is set to remain so for Sunday’s race but it has failed to subdue a reinvigorated Williams team who are making a robust bid to return to their glory days in the sun. So positive has been their recent form that from the team’s lowest ebb only two years ago it is now wins and the world championship being targeted by the deputy team principal, Claire Williams.
This venerable and much-loved British racing institution, Frank Williams’s great privateer adventure that began in 1977 and took nine constructors’ and seven drivers’ titles in those heady 80s and 90s, delighted the crowd at that other great homegrown institution, the British Grand Prix. Beating the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg off the start line, Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas took first and third which swiftly turned into a one-two and , for 20 laps, the underdogs were having their day.
The rain that enlivened a great race cost them, however. The FW37 lacks downforce in the wet and controversial tactics also played their part, so fourth and fifth finishes were a disappointment. Yet in 2013 Williams were ninth in the constructors’ championship, scoring only five points. Last year they were third, ahead of Ferrari and this year are third again but targeting the second-placed Scuderia, whom they trail by 60 points.
Claire Williams explains that this sudden resurgence has forced the team to adjust their ambitions upwards. “Our goal when we began our transformation, our big turnaround, was short-term to move up the grid,” she says. “But then we did it, so that was adjusted. So now let’s look at how we are going to win the world championship. We are closing that gap to hopefully getting race wins and a championship week on week and month on month at the factory. That is what our development plan is geared towards.”
This revival has not happened by accident. Of course the Mercedes power unit has been crucial but so have been changes within the team. A positive decision was taken to invest in improvement. Pat Symonds was brought in as chief technical officer, Rob Smedley as head of performance, alongside various other new senior technical positions. Massa, who had come from Ferrari, said it felt like a new team and, high praise indeed, that the aero department was stronger than the Scuderia’s. His experience alongside the now highly sought-after pace of Bottas completed the picture.
“When the team doesn’t perform on the track, it is inevitably because something is not working back at base,” says Williams. “We have a very stable team at the moment. It is a happy team.There are no politics. We have our structure in place, everyone is working well together and that will enable us to hopefully continue this progress forward.”
A mark of this can be seen in their aggressive development. Behind Ferrari at the start of the season, they have caught and passed them. Even the disappointment at a very poor showing at Monaco, a circuit that admittedly does not suit the FW37, was met with a strong comeback with podiums in Canada and Austria. While in Hungary, another tight track with characteristics similar to Monaco they have clearly addressed some of the shortcomings they had in the principality with a sixth and eighth place in qualifying.
Equally, there was further cause for optimism when the team’s development driver, Alex Lynn, scored his debut GP2 victory a little later in the afternoon.
Competing at this level after such a long time has its problems, as Silverstone showed. The team took flak for not allowing Bottas, who appeared quicker than Massa, to take the lead and then to use the Brazilian to back up the chasing Mercedes – a bold strategy and one that, had it stayed dry, might even have resulted in a win. But telling the drivers to hold station was a call Williams defends. “We don’t know if Valtteri was quicker. He thinks he was. We don’t know if he was,” she insists. “It was one lap during which the engineers tried to take some time to think what were the best strategies for the two. The level of criticism that was angled towards us was slightly unfair.”
These decisions, Williams believes, are part and parcel of being in a team that is feeling its way back to the top. “This is a team that is still addressing the issues that we’ve had for years,” she says. “When you are a team that’s fighting further back, you don’t have these issues. The engineers aren’t thinking: ‘How on earth are we going to manage this race with a one-two and the likes of Mercedes biting at our heels?’ So for them it was a new experience and I think they did a great job to deal with the stress and pressure in a very difficult race.”
The team have, she admits, been “risk averse” in the past 18 months. Making the most of scoring points and not slipping up in the constructors championship and the crucial lucrative rewards a high finish ensures, has led to a sense of consolidation rather than aggression. But, with an optimistic team, still on an upward path, this is a case where success is likely to breed success. “We need to have some more races under our belt where we are in that position,” she says. “We have to feel a bit more comfortable with our operations, feel more confident in ourselves.”
