Co-founder and technical director of the stable Williams, Patrick Head was able to observe for himself the situation of the British team last year. Despite his 74 years and his step back for several years, he was called to occupy a consultant position in 2019 with an established mission in the short term.
The Grove structure, now led by Claire Williams, has had two difficult and painful seasons, both ending in last place in the constructors’ championship. An unflattering position, which beyond the sporting aspect has amplified the financial difficulties. In addition to a major internal reorganization initiated in recent months, Williams has publicly announced that it is looking for new investors, not excluding a partial or total sale of the team.
Again on the sidelines but still concerned about the future of the team, Patrick Head believes that the first determining factor will be the level of performance displayed with the FW43 for the coming season. “The thing with Formula 1 is that there is no bad team”, he explains in a podcast recorded by Motor Sport. “All the teams are very, very good. When you are tenth out of ten teams, you have the impression that you are very, very bad.”
“This year, it is very important that they return to the race”, he adds. “I am not naive enough to think that they will fight with the top three teams, but I hope they will be part of what we will call the second half of the grid. From there, they have to make their way. You can’t manage an F1 team by finishing tenth out of ten constantly. “
Patrick Head believes that at the head of the company, Claire Williams manages to do a good job given the circumstances: “Claire did the right thing in order to establish a significant budget for this year if we take into account the two seasons ended in tenth place”.
According to the British, it is on the side of the technical department that we must look for the essential reasons for the bad crossing pass: “There are fantastic and good people. For various reasons, without necessarily saying that there are people who are bad, they had a flood of technical leaders, some of whom had skills but were not made for run a business like Williams. It’s a team that struggles to stay alive. They need technical leadership. “
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