The demise of Williams

Thirteen years ago Williams was the strongest team in Formula One. At the end of 1997 the Grove outfit had won 16 World Championships and had taken 103 Grand Prix victories, statistics that were remarkably close to Ferrari’s all-time records. Williams were responsible for taking the standard of engineering in Formula One to a new level.

Today, the team is lodged deep in the midfield and is unable to score consistent points let alone podiums or victories. It is rather sad that one of Formula One’s most successful constructors is now a mere shadow of its former self and is sliding further towards the back of the grid. Williams’ fall from grace is particularly evident at the moment as the team looks set to hire a pay driver for the first time in its history.

Pastor Maldonado is the current GP2 champion and is backed by the Venezuelan Government through the PDVSA oil company. He will join Williams for the upcoming young driver test in Abu Dhabi and has been linked to a race seat with the team next year. Williams senior management recently visited Venezuela which would suggest they had more to discuss with Maldonado’s sponsors than just a simple one day test.

There is no reason for Williams to replace Rubens Barrichello or Nico Hulkenberg with a rookie, and they only seem interested in Maldonado thanks to the contribution he would make to the team’s shrinking budget. Patrick Head admitted as much to reporters during the Korean Grand Prix weekend and it represents a significant milestone for the team who have never resorted to hiring a pay driver in the past.

There were suggestions that Williams only signed Kazuki Nakajima in 2008 to appease Toyota but the team claimed he was given his seat on merit and they had enough evidence to support this argument. Williams cannot make the same case for Maldonado who was thrashed by Hulkenberg when they were teammates in GP2.

How did the strongest team in Formula One lose so much ground that it now seeks pay drivers to stay alive?

There is no one factor to blame for Williams’ demise but rather a series of events that came together during the late nineties.

Renault

Having achieved all of their goals, Renault withdrew from Formula One in 1997 as part of a long term rebranding strategy. The French manufacturer had been providing engines to Williams and their partnership resulted in nine World Championships. Although Patrick Head’s technical team was responsible for producing some excellent chassis, they were competitive thanks to powerful and reliable Renault V10s during an era when engines varied greatly throughout the field.

Renault’s exit left Williams with a customer engine supply which lacked the performance and development that would’ve been offered by a major manufacturer.

New regulations

In the same year that Renault left Formula One, the sport’s technical regulations were transformed with the introduction narrow track cars and grooved tyres. Teams were forced to create entirely new designs and this eroded the technical advantage that Williams had built up over a number of years. Winning teams always have the most to lose during any such overhaul and a number of Williams’ rivals were able to capitalise on the levelled playing field.

Adrian Newey

A year before the new regulations took effect Adrian Newey announced his departure from Williams. He had started with the team in 1990 and was responsible for designing the cars that produced a purple patch of championships. Although he wasn’t the only brilliant mind at Williams, history has shown that Newey’s influence within the team was significant and that his defection to McLaren was a huge loss.

Rothmans

In 1998, Rothmans International was taken over by British American Tobacco. At the time, BAT already had their own team in Formula One and subsequently withdrew the Rothmans and Winfield brands from the sport. This left Williams without a major title sponsor and the team no longer had the massive budget to match their fiercest rivals. Unfortunately the decrease in funding coincided with the team’s drop in performance and that made it harder to attract similar blue chip sponsors.

Ferrari

Williams’ initial downfall came at a time when Ferrari’s new order was starting to find its feet. The combination of Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne in a team built around Michael Schumacher would go onto become the most dominant in Formula One history. Even a full strength Williams outfit would have found it hard to race against the might of the Scuderia dream team so they were always going to struggle with fewer resources.

Mercedes

Along with Ferrari’s rise back into championship contention during the late nineties, Mercedes was also in the ascendancy. The German manufacturer had joined Formula One in 1993 and started a partnership with McLaren two years later. By the end of the nineties, Mercedes had developed the most powerful engine in Formula One and their massive investment in the sport was largely responsible for propelling McLaren back into the winners circle.

1998 was a poor year for Williams who were unable to mount any meaningful defence of their World Championship. It was their worst season in a decade and it wasn’t just a blip on the radar. Between 1995 and 1997, Williams scored an impressive 53 podiums. Over the following three years they scored just 9.

The rise and fall of BMW

Williams was hurting without the support of a major car manufacturer but they gave themselves a chance at redemption by signing a valuable deal with BMW.

The partnership started well and the new combination won four races in its second year. The following two seasons were also promising and Williams were even outside contenders for the 2003 championship.

However, without the former strength of their technical team or the budget that comes with tobacco sponsorship, Williams was unable to compete consistently with Ferrari or McLaren. They slipped further behind the championship challengers when Fernando Alonso and Renault emerged as a competitive force in 2004.

This problem was compounded by Williams’ choice of drivers. Montoya and Schumacher were both very quick but were also inconsistent. By the time they had left the team, Williams was no longer able to attract or afford the best talent and signed Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld for 2005. They were a very competent pairing but it’s hard to consider them in the same mould as Alonso and Raikkonen who were fighting for Grand Prix victories.

BMW grew frustrated with Williams. Not only were they failing to win races but Frank Williams and Patrick Head were preventing BMW from taking more control in the organisation. The Bavarians wanted a relationship similar to the one between McLaren and Mercedes, but Williams management refused to relinquish any control or stake in the team and prevented BMW from getting more out of their F1 investment.

Williams was also growing tired with the notoriously unreliable BMW engines and openly suggested that was responsible for the team’s poor results.

The rising tensions resulted in the inevitable public divorce and BMW switched their focus to a controlling stake in Sauber. The partnership’s failure was a disappointment to all concerned given that it started with so much potential.

The slide towards obscurity

Williams was forced to run with uncompetitive Cosworth engines in 2006 and they also lost the sponsorship associated with a major brand like BMW. Elsewhere on the grid, Toyota and Honda were throwing untold millions into the sport and F1 was becoming more expensive. Williams’ decreasing budget confined the team to the second half of the grid and they have been struggling to move forward ever since.

Pastor Maldonado will not make the struggle any easier.

The Future

Williams’ future is not entirely bleak. In 2013 the technical regulations will be overhauled to feature completely new engines and aerodynamics. In the same way that Williams was hurt by new rules in 1998, the shakeup in two years could work to their advantage. More environmentally responsible regulations are also likely to attract new car manufacturers to the sport and that’s another potential gain for Williams. They already have a technical relationship with Porsche who recently hinted they may return to Grand Prix racing, so that could possibly open the door for an F1 engine deal. Access to the resources and support of the massive Audi group would go a long way towards taking Williams back to the top of Formula One.

Pastor Maldonado does not represent a step in that direction.