JV:Williams is dead

[cosworth151]

I believe that some of this can be blamed on the in-season testing restrictions. If a team, especially a low money one, gets it way wrong, there isn't much they can do to fix it.

[Scott]

I don’t really understand the pay driver angle.  USUALLY (I give an exception to Perez, though it took him a few years to find his way) the drivers suck, and wreck a lot of carbon. 

If a team is at or near the back of the grid, it seems to me that the strategy would be to scout out a crazy talented youngster they can hire for peanuts or an up and coming contracted driver that one of the big teams want to park for a year or two to get some experience.  At least with non-pay drivers, they may have talent in the seat who can attract more or bigger sponsorship going forward.  The most I’ve ever heard of a pay driver bringing it is around $10m or so.  That’s no much of a dent in a $100m budget (I’m guessing Williams is around this...probably more), especially if half of the driver’s kitty goes to rebuilding broken cars.

Open to clarifications...

[guest3164]

I think the thing is now the really, really good young talents are now hoovered up by the bigger teams.  It is no coincidence that the really exciting talents in recent years have belonged to Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull.  Even now we look at Norris (McLaren), Russell (Mercedes), Giovinazzi (Ferrari), Ticktum (Red Bull) as the rookies most likely to be successes in F1.  Smaller teams like Williams are left with the cast offs from these schemes (Bottas aside, but he was very much Wolff's protege as opposed to the team's) which is why Williams went for Stroll (Ferrari cast off, moved away to get a race seat), Lynn (Red Bull cast off), Rowland (Renault cast off, but Renault seem to not be doing so great with junior drivers right now).  Sauber have gotten a Ferrari talent, Force India a Merc star in the making, STR we all know about. 

I guess also the cost of putting the young drivers through the feeder series adds up as well and if you're struggling for a budget in F1, it makes paying for a youngster a tough ask.  I'd love to see my lot bring in a new rookie of their own as opposed to selling themselves to the highest bidder and taking a real risk on drivers.  Stroll is not the worst, neither is Sirotkin, but both appear below the level you would want .  Regarding what they bring in, Stroll apparently started north of £10m but it has decreased with each season and SMP allegedly are around £15m, although this is of course 'not' for Sirotkin's seat (pull the other one!)  I think Maldonado was worth about £40m to the team, but he was an anomaly.  But then Pastor was always special 

[Alianora La Canta]

I don’t really understand the pay driver angle.  USUALLY (I give an exception to Perez, though it took him a few years to find his way) the drivers suck, and wreck a lot of carbon. 

If a team is at or near the back of the grid, it seems to me that the strategy would be to scout out a crazy talented youngster they can hire for peanuts or an up and coming contracted driver that one of the big teams want to park for a year or two to get some experience.  At least with non-pay drivers, they may have talent in the seat who can attract more or bigger sponsorship going forward.  The most I’ve ever heard of a pay driver bringing it is around $10m or so.  That’s no much of a dent in a $100m budget (I’m guessing Williams is around this...probably more), especially if half of the driver’s kitty goes to rebuilding broken cars.

Open to clarifications...

It depends how much improvement that driver will give to you, where you are in relation to your rivals, and how high-pay a pay driver you can get.

The Strolls were, at one point, paying Williams $40 m per year (25% or so of the team's total budget, and possibly more than title sponsor Martini were paying). You can buy a lot of car performance for 25% of a team's budget, even if it's a backmarker-funded team like Sauber, Force India and Toro Rosso were at the start of 2017. (Arguably, Toro Rosso is the only one at that lowish level of $100-$120 million). Williams' budget is more like $160 million.

The TV monies are worth something, but each step is only worth a certain amount more than the one below it. Williams gets $10 m CCB payment for historical performance, that doesn't change (this is like having an extra sponsor). It also gets a performance figure, depending on TV and track payments. Back in 2014, 10th was worth $40 m and 4th was worth $72 m, giving a per-position step value of $5.5 m. However, that figure has been going down recently, and I think it may be as low as $4 m per position of improvement beyond the base level. (Note: Internet/OTT goes straight to Liberty until at least 2020, and doesn't go to the teams at all, as far as I know).

As such, a $40 m pay driver right now is like the difference between winning the world title and coming last, from a strict financial perspective. And can you be sure any talented hotshoe is going to come in and win the title on their debut year in a car that probably won't be the fastest, in a series where the driver makes relatively little difference and where good F4 drivers are quite capable of transferring to F1 and qualifying in 107% level in terms of skill?

Even a pay driver bringing $12 m like Kubica is bringing for his reserve drive (who we know has been outbid by at least 2 other drivers in Williams in 2018 - I heard SMP's contribution for Sirotkin was $22 m) is worth 3 positions on the world championship. So a more-or-lesssponsor-less independent GP2 frontrunner such as Artem Markolev would need to guarantee single-handedly giving Williams 7th instead of 10th in the championship simply to outbid Kubica. As it happens, Kubica is probably talented enough to get that 7th (or at least 8th-9th place) himself, further complicating the position... ...you get the idea.

Some of the best talents get hoovered up by development squads. (Note that some development squads allow sponsors to pay for drivers to come in, and these drivers then get buffed up in the same way as a true talent is, so that's less of a clear division than it may seem). These days, the majority fall by the wayside for lack of money, often at the very first stage of karting, because the big sponsors know there's a bidding war worth fighting and they start it with the 8-year-olds.

[Irisado]

It's also worth noting that some drivers started as pay drivers and then became very highly paid drivers (e.g. Niki Lauda), but they tend to be few in number.

Not all pay drivers have a high accident rate either.  Take Pedro Diniz, for example.  He effectively financed the Forti team in 1995, yet only retired through driver error once throughout the entire season, despite having come with a reputation for spins, and was regularly faster and more consistent than experienced team mate Roberto Moreno.  Of course, you have the other end of the spectrum with drivers like Taki Inoue, who spend most of their time spinning or crashing, at which point the costs start to outweigh the benefits, but even so Arrows kept Inoue on in 1995 for the whole season.  Morbidelli's mid-season replacement Massimiliano Papis may have brought money, but didn't set the world on fire and was dropped before the season's end.

Overall, I'd be surprised if there is a strong correlation between pay drivers and accidents, although Maldonado will almost certainly have affected this during his time in Formula 1.

So far as Williams is concerned, neither Sirotkin nor Stroll have had a particularly high accident rate through driver error in the races.  Ulimately, neither seems to have the sort of pace needed to run at the front and Stroll's attitude grates on me, but neither is the next Taki Inoue or Yuji Ide.