The fight between Mercedes and Ferrari remains finely poised at the front of the Formula One grid as Canada hosts round seven of the season this weekend. Certainly there was little to choose between them in practice on Friday at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with Lewis Hamilton edging out Sebastian Vettel in the morning and Kimi Raikkonen ahead of the British driver in the afternoon but, behind them the gulf to the midfield teams remains a chasm.
It is in danger of becoming even more pronounced. The Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe has warned that the spending differential to the top teams is greater than ever and the sport’s senior management addressed the issue in Canada. Williams are currently in sixth place in the constructors’ championship. They have a quick car but they and their contemporaries on the grid are still two seconds off the pace of the leaders, not a gap that can be bridged while the financial disparity remains so drastic.
“We face a gulf of spending that has probably never been seen before in the sport,” said Lowe, whose first stint with Williams concluded in 1992 with Nigel Mansell winning the title. “It was a great reward to us that we came and beat McLaren. We knew they had a lot more money than us and we did a better job than them. But the distortion we have today is on another level. Probably a factor of two-and-a-half times in expenditure between the leading teams and the first of the independents. That seems like a gulf that is difficult to cross, certainly in a sustained way.”
Estimated figures from 2016 back him up, with Williams spending £100m to the £265m of Mercedes, £225m of Ferrari and £215m of Red Bull. Lowe has first hand experience of some of this largesse, having been technical director at Mercedes between 2013 and 2016. “It is clear something has to be done about that,” he said.
Williams are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year and the team are still held in high regard. Thirty-thousand fans turned out last week to attend a day at Silverstone for a display of their cars. The circuit will host a similar event at the British Grand Prix and the fans’ reaction will doubtless be similarly enthusiastic. But they have not won a title since 1997 and, as things stand, are not in the mix to do so again. Chase Carey, the chief executive of the Formula One group, acknowledged the issue on Friday in Montreal and insisted it was being addressed. “There is no question right now that there is a disparity in spending that is quite wide,” he said. “There are amounts being spent at the top that even the teams that are spending it would recognise it is tough to rationalise. It creates issues because it undermines the competitive balance of the sport.”
He was backed by F1’s director of motorsports, Ross Brawn, who also agreed that changes would occur but within parameters. “We don’t want to dumb Formula One down,” he said. “We don’t want all the teams to be exactly the same, there should still be the Ferrari, the Mercedes, the Red Bulls, the teams you aspire to beat but we don’t want domination. We need an environment where if a team does a really good job it can do well. We don’t want a situation where financial power enables a team to get a dominant position, as has happened in the last few years.”
Rob Smedley, Williams’ head of vehicle performance, joined the team from Ferrari having been with the Scuderia just as Brawn and Jean Todt were helping Michael Schumacher to his fifth consecutive title in 2004. He believes the current structure of F1 is a direct consequence of that period noting the role Brawn, the poacher now turned gamekeeper, played.
“It is essential F1 should not just be how much you spend. Williams showed you didn’t have to be the richest team but that it’s become less about that was probably created by my old team when Ross and Jean built a team around finding marginal gains,” he said. “F1 should be about engineering excellence and brave drivers going toe to toe on the track.”
The task is a considerable one. Damon Hill won his title with Williams in 1996 and recognises how much the landscape of the sport has changed. “It is very difficult for a team like Williams to break the stranglehold that Ferrari and Mercedes have,” he said.
The perennial problem is one of coaxing agreement from teams with vested interests but Hill believes it will be dealt with because of commercial expediency. “F1 is as much about teams competing as it is about drivers,” he added. “[Owners] Liberty see this as entertainment and their buck comes from the racing and if there is no bang they don’t get people watching.”
