Former champions now target "fine-tuning" for an even better 2015
Monday 15 September 2014 12:41, UK
Claire Williams says the next phase of rebuilding at the revitalised team is centred on returning to championship-winning ways following the successful “reset” process at Grove.
From slumping to a lowly ninth place in the Constructors’ Championship at the end of F1’s previous regulation era in 2013 Williams have proved by far the most improved team in the first year of turbo engines and currently sit third in the standings ahead of Ferrari.
Having not even finished in the top four of the championships for seven seasons, 2014’s step forward from the midfield wilderness to regular podium finishers undoubtedly already represents a major achievement. However, as a team which have won 114 races and the second most Constructors’ Championships in history, second, let alone third, is historically not been considered good enough and Williams, the outfit’s Deputy Team Principal, says the goal has always been to return to such former glories.
“We’ve always had a long-term plan when we pushed the reset button last year. We’ve turned the team more significantly around than we thought we would have done,” she said.
“Going from ninth to fourth [before Monza] and then hopefully battling on from third. It’s a significant turnaround, but it’s always been when we hit that reset button about winning another World Championship – and not just one, hopefully more after that as well. So that’s the plan and now the work is going in to try and achieve that.
“It’s relatively easy to turn around a team that’s in ninth and take it up to fourth, but when you want to start challenging for a championship it’s a whole different piece of work.”
Although their proud heritage suggests the team should be well-versed in moulding championship-winning seasons, Williams points out that their decline has been a long one – they have only won one race in the last decade – and therefore further work is needed to return to that kind of operational level.
“People can say ‘why do Williams need to do this?’ In Formula 1, your performance, how you’re doing, you see on the race track every other weekend and it’s not just a couple of seasons that we’ve had that have been disappointing, it’s quite a few seasons,” she explained.
“It’s been quite a number of years in decline in our team. We do have great resources, we’ve always had a great talent pool in house, great assets to work with, but for some reason they haven’t worked together in the way that we’ve needed to.
“So we did do the research and we know what the next step is, but how do we get there?”
Williams explained that maximising the changes they had already put in place was key to taking another step forward next year.
“It’s a lot about fine-tuning the processes. So a lot of things you could have got away with when you’re fighting around at the back, if you make certain mistakes they don’t necessarily matter," the team chief added.
"So now it’s about having everything working absolutely perfectly across every single element of your race team and if it doesn’t that’s when you drop your points and you’re not winning.
“I don’t think there are major pieces. I think the work we did last year were the major bits of the jigsaw and they’re all settling in and working really well together. Now it is literally just the pieces on top of that that we have to fine tune.”
The 2014 Singapore GP is live only on Sky Sports F1 this weekend, with our coverage beginning with Practice from 10.45am on Friday.
