[ 2020 ] Williams F1 Team - Mercedes

[Lotus102]

Toto wasn't leading Williams in 2009, he joined as a shareholder and slowly ramped up involvement to become executive director in 2012, which is still to date the teams last win. And then 2013 was a bit of an unfortunate fluke, the team had a decent car but never really got the hang of the coanda exhaust, they struggled with inconsistent downforce that could drastically change midcorner. Reverting to a conventional exhaust saw the team suddenly leap from backmarkers to solid midfielders, sadly this only happened in the last 2 races of the year.

The Toto Wolff period at Williams was 2012 onwards with an official departure in 2013 but still with a lot of influence in 2014 and some influence through 2015 up until he sold the last shares in 2016.

Don't forget all the talk in 2014 and 2015 about Williams being tailgunners for Mercedes and having a special relationship the other customers did not have.

I don’t think it can be said that Williams had a decent car in 2013. Moreover, though, they had absolutely no idea of what was wrong with it and how to improve it. The tech dept under Coughlan was utterly shambolic, randomly bringing illogical collections of new parts and 2012 bits to hang on the car in the vague hope something turned out to be faster. I don’t know why people find it so hard to accept but it was when Claire took charge that things began to turn round. Maybe there were some things that Toto put in place, but they sure as hell weren’t in the tech dept, which was sorted out by Pat Symonds and Rob Smedley, both Claire appointments.

Not sure what influence Toto had after leaving, other than helping to persuade WR to switch from Renault to Merc, and possibly to take Susie as development driver. What input to shareholders usually have when they don’t have a specific management role too?

I don’t remember talk of a special relationship, no. IIRC the Williams Mercs were slightly down on power relative to everyone else’s because they were using Petrobras fuels and lubricants, rather than the Petronas ones it was designed for. When did they ever act as ‘tail gunners’? I don’t recall Williams doing anything other than their own race.

[Mr Brooksy]

Don't forget all the talk in 2014 and 2015 about Williams being tailgunners for Mercedes and having a special relationship the other customers did not have.

I don’t remember talk of a special relationship, no. IIRC the Williams Mercs were slightly down on power relative to everyone else’s because they were using Petrobras fuels and lubricants, rather than the Petronas ones it was designed for. When did they ever act as ‘tail gunners’? I don’t recall Williams doing anything other than their own race.

Williams has the same fuel in Petronas but they used Petrobras lubricants. Petrobras wanted to use their own fuels, but Mercedes wouldn't allow it if I remember correctly. Hence one of the reasons Petrobras left Williams as they wanted to use F1 to showcase their own technology.

Also, I don't remember the "trail gunner" rumours having any credible source. From memory that was a fan based rumour trying to explain why Williams went from flop in 2013 to front runner in the next 2 sessions. Happy to be proven wrong, but I do remember Mercedes saying many times in that period that each customer team gets the exact same hardware that the factory team got. It was the Ferraris that were giving year old PUs to customers (in 2015 obviously), not Mercedes.

The biggest difference that Massa said at the time were the engine maps that were held for the factory team over the customers. Here is an article that had Massa's comments on engine maps.

https://theparcferme.com/do-mercedes-cu ... l-engines/

There was however the end of 2015 when Merc had only made 2 higher spec PUs from Monza onwards and they did not give them to their customer teams. But again no favouritism towards Williams over other customers.

[rohan]

Toto wasn't leading Williams in 2009, he joined as a shareholder and slowly ramped up involvement to become executive director in 2012, which is still to date the teams last win. And then 2013 was a bit of an unfortunate fluke, the team had a decent car but never really got the hang of the coanda exhaust, they struggled with inconsistent downforce that could drastically change midcorner. Reverting to a conventional exhaust saw the team suddenly leap from backmarkers to solid midfielders, sadly this only happened in the last 2 races of the year.

The Toto Wolff period at Williams was 2012 onwards with an official departure in 2013 but still with a lot of influence in 2014 and some influence through 2015 up until he sold the last shares in 2016.

Don't forget all the talk in 2014 and 2015 about Williams being tailgunners for Mercedes and having a special relationship the other customers did not have.

I don’t think it can be said that Williams had a decent car in 2013. Moreover, though, they had absolutely no idea of what was wrong with it and how to improve it. The tech dept under Coughlan was utterly shambolic, randomly bringing illogical collections of new parts and 2012 bits to hang on the car in the vague hope something turned out to be faster. I don’t know why people find it so hard to accept but it was when Claire took charge that things began to turn round. Maybe there were some things that Toto put in place, but they sure as hell weren’t in the tech dept, which was sorted out by Pat Symonds and Rob Smedley, both Claire appointments.

Not sure what influence Toto had after leaving, other than helping to persuade WR to switch from Renault to Merc, and possibly to take Susie as development driver. What input to shareholders usually have when they don’t have a specific management role too?

I don’t remember talk of a special relationship, no. IIRC the Williams Mercs were slightly down on power relative to everyone else’s because they were using Petrobras fuels and lubricants, rather than the Petronas ones it was designed for. When did they ever act as ‘tail gunners’? I don’t recall Williams doing anything other than their own race.

This is the truth. Any other suggestions are just foolish.

[bill shoe]

Joe Saward is not a shrill, alarmist journalist. He has a good piece on the current realities of a 2020 championship, and the possibility of some teams not making it to 2021.

We must face up to the possibility that there will not be a World Championship this year and that not all of the races and teams will survive the financial impact of the coronavirus.

Given the Williams Team's independent financial situation without a deep-pocket person in the background, they have to be considered first on the risk list. I'm wishing for a lot of things right now, and Williams' survival is not at the bottom of the list.

https://www.joeblogsf1.com/joesaward/id/00741

[Lynx]

That independent financial situation can be good or it can be bad. The other 9 teams are largely dependent on their owner. If that owner stops pouring money to the team, the team is in existential troubles. Remember Honda, Toyota and BMW from the last crisis in 2008 - 2009. At that time Williams did relatively well.

I also think that Joe Saward is respectable journalist but like everyone else he is also in the middle of this very dark time when we mostly have negative perception about the future events. Let's wait for 2 or 3 weeks and I am sure that around Easter things will start to look better and brighter. In China things got better and they will get better here too. My opinion is that the season will start around June and it will run right to the end of the year. When it starts, I hope that the car performance will be respectable.

I can only help the team by buying one of this years shirt. I am waiting currently for sunglasses as they seem to be sold and out of stock in their shop.

[bill shoe]

I can only help the team by buying one of this years shirt. I am waiting currently for sunglasses as they seem to be sold and out of stock in their shop.

I just bought an official 2020 Polo shirt online. Yea, not a big deal but it makes me feel better and a little help for the team is better than none.

[Manoah2u]

I can only help the team by buying one of this years shirt. I am waiting currently for sunglasses as they seem to be sold and out of stock in their shop.

I just bought an official 2020 Polo shirt online. Yea, not a big deal but it makes me feel better and a little help for the team is better than none.

unless you've paid a million bucks for a shirt, it won't make any difference.

[Lotus102]

That independent financial situation can be good or it can be bad. The other 9 teams are largely dependent on their owner. If that owner stops pouring money to the team, the team is in existential troubles. Remember Honda, Toyota and BMW from the last crisis in 2008 - 2009. At that time Williams did relatively well.

I also think that Joe Saward is respectable journalist but like everyone else he is also in the middle of this very dark time when we mostly have negative perception about the future events. Let's wait for 2 or 3 weeks and I am sure that around Easter things will start to look better and brighter. In China things got better and they will get better here too. My opinion is that the season will start around June and it will run right to the end of the year. When it starts, I hope that the car performance will be respectable.

I can only help the team by buying one of this years shirt. I am waiting currently for sunglasses as they seem to be sold and out of stock in their shop.

Tbh I doubt we'll be going again before September, but we'll see. I dare say Williams will be dependent on the goodwill of sponsors like Rokit, and whether or not they continue to pay even if there might not be any races for a while. I would imagine that if the sponsors can manage to keep up their payments, they will, as there's no benefit to them in seeing Williams go under. And Williams has a very savvy marketing department who will no doubt be looking at alternative ways they can bring some exposure for sponsors.

Also, Williams being a historic team with a hard core of loyal fans is not to be underestimated. Any merch sales will be helping - it all adds up.

[PlatinumZealot]

Having just watched the drive to survive episode, it actually underlines how wrong I was to support Paddy as much as I did.

Like many die hard Williams fans, I've seen and read a lot of published material on the Williams team in the past few decades. One thing that the episode does underline is that Claire genuinely cares about her staff, and her team. I've seen this and read about it before, but the multiple times shown in the episode shows her genuine feeling for team members.

Is she the right person to lead Williams back to the front? I don't know, but I don't doubt that she really cares about everyone who works at Williams, and of that is the culture that she presents, the blame game might be coming from elsewhere.

Well before Paddy and Williams we must remember that Pat Symonds designed and oversaw 2 of Williams most successful cars in the past decade. Those 2 cars more often than not were the only ones really challenging the mighty Mercs. Claire was behind that. She also landed the Martini deal. She somehow also landed the Rockit deal when there was no way we earned a title sponsor. She has done more than many here and on other forums give her credit for.

I always thought that it was very strange how quickly Pat Symonds wanted out of Williams as soon as the Lowe announcment was made, also interesting that Toto and Mercedes were strangely very happy to let Paddy go at the end of 2016, and how SNR Stroll who had huge admiration for Paddy still hasn't signed up his buddy... Also it was very telling that during Paddy's leadership at Williams there were murmurs of the blame game culture (anyone hear of that during Pat Symonds time?). The 2017 car that started so well simply got worse and worse, granted partially due to correlation issues I'm sure, but again it was a good baseline car apart from it's obvious weakness.

Please understand I'm not blaming everything on Lowe, and I'm certainly not exonerating Claire, but we can see Williams history during the Hybrid era and no one in their right mind can lump all the criticism squally on Claire.

Being a leadership consultant myself, I know that leaders who won't recognise their part in a circumstance are not part of the team. They are always the ones who want the accolades when things are going well, but palm off responsibility when things heads south.

What I have unfortunately seen in this mess, is that Claire accepts that she is part of the failure and Paddy didn't.

As you can see I have the great Paddy Lowe in my Avatar.

When I was a McLaren fan I trusted Paddy as an Engineer. McLaren had alternating design team leads for alternating years. There was the Paddy car and the "other guy's" cars. Paddy's cars were always the fast ones so you can guess which cars those were. I think he proved himself enough at 80's Williams and enough at McLaren why he was taken on at Mercedes.

When he went over there I was a bit worried for him. Thought he was a super nerd who could never manage the executive side of things... But I was pleasantly surprised. Evidence is there that he did a swell job at Mercedes. I am not sure what Happened at Williams... But if i could draw parallels with my experience, i would guess that Paddy had very large ambitions technically and operationally, but he got a real political fight and it was probably impossible for him to pull any resources behind him to implement those changes. In the drive to survive Williams episode I coud see it in the body language of the Claire, Paddy, mechanics and other managers. Reminded me so much of myself.

Paddy has that look in face. The whole thing is an Alms house, he's fighting in a shitstorm and there is no fixing it anytime soon. He likely knew why the parts where late... Some other management figure most likely made dumb decisions.... but he politley kept his mouth shut to keep the peace. You could see it in his face.

An interesting scene was when the parts arrived to the track and Claire and the other guy walked right past Paddy in the garage! Not even eye contact!

[PlatinumZealot]

yes he has to take responsibility doesn't he. It was just such a surprise as you've said and a disappointment, I really thought he'd turn Williams round, knowing all Mercedes' processes and virtual environment and generally how it's done

It just goes to show how little we actually know often about what goes on inside the teams and who's responsible really. But Mercedes dumped him for James Allison, so in that sense he was a cast-off like Mike Coughlan

Williams was apparently close to signing Allison before Mercedes swooped in, and it is said that Merc smoothed Paddy's path to go to Williams in compensation. It seems pretty obvious that Merc weren't that keen to hang on to Lowe. I have my theories as to what Toto knew and how much he rated the various people involved. I suppose the question is how much Paddy actually understood of the Mercedes internal systems and processes, or just benefited from things that were put in place by Ross Brawn

At the time I think the story goes the Lowe wanted shares in Mercedes just as Toto and Nikki had and a sort of elevated status, which
was naturally the next step in his career.
If I remember, there were rumours of friction between Toto and Paddy at the time. Even the two, giving Lewis conflicting team orders in one of the races (I can't remember which one right now). Anyway, Lowe was already used to winning championships so the promise of more at Mercedes was not appealing to him if he remained a regular employee. He knew his best chance to be part owner of a team was at his old team Williams, which was on the dip at the time. And lowe and behold... He got his wishes. He was allowed to be a part of the the team ownership and also get to be executive director technical. He wasn't pushed out If i remember.

[PlatinumZealot]

oh i didn't know that. you can only wonder how Williams would've got on with James instead of Paddy! And Mercedes took Paddy in the first place obviously, thinking he'd be great, and perhaps in that environment he was effective enough or could just do the things he was good at

Yes, I think that's it. My take on it, fwiw, is that Paddy is an extremely talented senior engineer, but had ambitions for a team principal/owner role for which he is not suited. There was already a bit of an issue at Merc over his pay and seniority (Allison was more or less a drop-in replacement but on significantly less pay and with less authority). I understand he wanted to become a major shareholder like Toto and Niki but they weren't prepared to acquiese to that. Williams were, but just dodged the bullet (he was supposed to receive his shares after three years in the role, subject to satisfaction on both sides, but obviously that never happened).

It's interesting looking at 'cobwebs' that are still around. There's still a page for Paddy on the Merc site, which describes his role thus: 'In June 2013, Paddy Lowe was appointed Executive Director (Technical) at the MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team – overseeing the team’s adaptation to the Hybrid Formula One revolution from a technical perspective.' It says very little about what he was actually doing after that, other than vague mentions of more silverware in 2014-15. I can see that with a fairly specific and well-defined and engineering-led project like that, he'd be just the man you want. As far as what happened at Williams is concerned, we'll never know exactly where the fault lay and the extent to which he was enabled to do what he thought needed to be done. But for me, several things stand out. First is that Williams was a functioning team at the end of 2017, which had the car to finish fourth and might well have done with a more solid driver lineup but by the start of 2019 was an unholy mess; and second is just the way Paddy conducted himself at the beginning of 2019. However bad things were within the team is it possible to imagine that a Ross Brawn or a Toto Wolff would have stepped in front of cameras and said they didn't know why the car was late to pre-season testing, having assured the boss just weeks before that it wouldn't be? Ultimately he just lacks the force of personality required to get things done. Claire has it, Christian Horner has it, even Gunter Steiner has his moments (though I suspect he'd be toast at most other teams). Maybe Paddy found that people who would go the extra mile for Claire, wouldn't for him.

Ooh! Just seeong this post! Yes! Our stories are similar!

[bdr529]

I can only help the team by buying one of this years shirt. I am waiting currently for sunglasses as they seem to be sold and out of stock in their shop.

I just bought an official 2020 Polo shirt online. Yea, not a big deal but it makes me feel better and a little help for the team is better than none.

unless you've paid a million bucks for a shirt, it won't make any difference.

Certainly not with that attitude

[Pouyan]

Hello everyone. I think neither Williams themselves nor F1 fans in general did give enough credit to what Pat Symonds did and how good he actually was at making things work for them. He not only fitted well within the team but also was great at making proper decisions (the kind of decisions Ross Brawn is famous for being able to make) and everything he did just made sense. As far as I know Symonds was behind pursuing a low drag simple concept,which combined with the power advantage of Mercedes power unit,worked like a charm for them. I'm not sure if he left or was pushed out to make place for Lowe.
And regarding Paddy Lowe,I'm not trying to downplay him at all,he has forgot more about F1 than I'll ever learn,but the success of Mercedes can't be attributed to him,and it kinda bothers me when people credit him for turning Mercedes around in 2014, Remember under Brawn's leadership Mercedes had began work on some aspects of the 2014 car way back in 2011! (as soon as the PU rules were made clear for them).
I suggest you read this interview with Symonds from way back in 2015:

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/inte ... again.html

Lastly,I hope my post doesn't violate any of the forums guidelines,this site has the best moderators I've ever seen and I'm sure they'll put me at my place if I do something wrong,for which I'm thankful as it makes for a better member experience for everyone.

[Sevach]

Pat Symonds was always a kinda of "forgotten man".
He was the guy Schumacher didn't bring to Ferrari...
Nobody was saying, "Pat Symonds what an amazing tech director" around the Alonso titles...
Took a huge hit with the Singapore 08 incident (fairly so).
And his work at Williams was also taken for granted when the team couldn't improve on that 2014 season (which should've been an obvious thing).

Paddy is great at being an engineer, i'm surprised he hasn't shown up with any teams, maybe he doesn't want it any more.
He wanted to be more than a engineer , he wanted to be "Patrick Head" and it didn't work for him, don't know why, maybe under different circumstances it would've worked who knows.

[Tattoo-]

The path of no return...