Sam Micheal resigns, Coughlan joins Williams

[sriraj1031]

Sam Micheal will resign at the end of the season; well Good news for willaims and i am sure shares will go up now

Source: http://en.espnf1.com/williams/motorspor ... 47380.html

[Sawtooth-spike]

Also Mike Coughlan is joining them. Dont know if this is a Good PR move given his past history (spygate).

I dont think Sam and Tomlinson falling on the swords will improve the situation at williams. Love the team and the history, but i think they are a shadow of their former selves. I cant seems them compeating with the Big boys again.

[Sebp]

I hope Coughlan has kept in touch with all the new regulations. If not he'll be very busy reading alot this year... Williams' own literature, preferably.

[WilliamsF1]

I hope Coughlan has kept in touch with all the new regulations. If not he'll be very busy reading alot this year... Williams' own literature, preferably.

Or 2013 regulations if available. No point in evolving a design that is at the end of its regulations.

[marcush.]

I don´t know what to make of this.Coughlan is surely one of the best who is available,Symmonds would be another one .
It gets more and more difficult to hire high profile names these days.

[horse]

Just what the hell happened over at Williams?

Sam Michael and Jon Tomlinson resign and Parr offers his resignation and takes responsibility,

I've addressed the whole factory and explained that I am responsible and have apologised for my part in this failure.

What's not come out in the press is what is really wrong with the car. It's not as if it's bad conceptually, they just don't seem to be able to make it work. It kind of reminds me of 2009 where they show up with a double diffuser and still no pace.

So is there too much difference between pace and potential or was the design simply wrong in the first place?

[Giblet]

I wonder if they will be able to work together to find some pace in that car over the year.

[donskar]

Also Mike Coughlan is joining them. Dont know if this is a Good PR move given his past history (spygate).

I dont think Sam and Tomlinson falling on the swords will improve the situation at williams. Love the team and the history, but i think they are a shadow of their former selves. I cant seems them compeating with the Big boys again.

All IMHO: No question: it's bad PR, now that they are publicly traded. It might have some small impact on their share price, but not disastrous.

For several years, Sam Michael (never trust a man with two first names . . . ) acted as Williams' spokesperson. I always thought, "OK, he has some tech skill combined with some public speaking ability -- good fit." Then one day he is tech director. I always thought that was sort of odd. Whatever, Williams clearly does not have the tech ability to compete with the big boys (and I remember when Williams WAS one of the big boys.) Coughlan gives them more tech depth, but they also have to add two more top people to replace Michael and Tomlinson. Lots of turmoil. Not good.

Let's face it: we spend a lot of time talking about Williams because of their past greatness. In reality, sadly, they have been irrelevant for years.

[ESPImperium]

I wish them well in their future. They had some good years, but i feel that they could have had 2 wins before now, Singapore 2010 is one massive opertunity, the other 2 are half chances, but still note worthy, again in Singapore 2 years earlier and in Brazil 2010 as well, but it was doen to driver error on Rosbergs fault for the 2 Singapore balls ups and the other was down to a compromised set up with Hulkenberg.

I wish them well, and wonder how long it will be before we can find them in a new design facility in Brackley or in the second Mercedes tunnel with Hispania alongside Geoff Willis or installed at Wirth Research???

Both are decent men who deserve another chance at a smaller team to resurect their career. And for the Virgin and Hispania theese names would be just what they are after as they have up to date info on what bigger teams are doing and what things should look and perform like, even tho they designed what is a dog this year.

[axle]

Technically he's resigned already (weeks ago I read) but he is honouring his contract which was due to expire at the end of the year.

So basically he's said don't renew me, and give me a chance to rebuild my reputation by fixing this years car.

[bot6]

I think what really happened is closer to this: Michael resigned, so did Parr. But Frank Williams and Paddy Head - for the sake of continuity and stability - asked them to stay at least until the end of the year for Michael and later for Parr as they see him as the future Frank Williams of the team.

Kudos to those guys for accepting responsibility for an under performing team, as the executive leaders of said team. That alone deserves a huge amount of respect.

On the technical side, and getting back to Sam Michael alone, I think the guy is a quality head designer. If you look at Williams in the past few years, they brought a lot of innovation (for instance, they thought of the double diffuser at the same time as BrawnGP, they designed that amazing mini-gearbox). But they always seem to do well in testing and then fade away.

To me, that shows a very good design team headed by a very capable head designer (Michael), but with a lacking in on-track engineering and subsequently development during the pre-season and season. Those failings would have been less evident if Williams could have more testing time to trial-and-error through things, but that's not the case today. And Williams' demise could be explained by the gradual diminishing of testing time.

I really think that any team would be lucky to have Sam Michael work for them as a head designer, especially teams like Virgin who are struggling at the moment. But as a head designer, not a technical director. A guy who leads the team finding ideas for next year's car without having to worry about during-the-year development.

He's a quality guy and Williams will miss him rather sooner than later, but as was mentioned before, that team does need new leadership and a breath of fresh air to motivate the troops. I really think they should have a closer look at their track engineering team though...

[axle]

He's not a designer, he simply is the man calling the shots about what direction the design/engineering teams take.

[bot6]

Which is the whole point of a head designer. It's more a management / select the right ideas role than a proper engineering one.

[AHlimon]

That's good news. I think it is very exciting for Williams.

[jon-mullen]

Coughlan is surely one of the best who is available

According to sources on this side of the pond, he's not available.