GPWizard F1 Forum
F1 News & Discussions => General F1 Discussion => Topic started by: Dare on July 15, 2018, 02:08:30 AM
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Think I might have to agree will Jack. There going
backwards every year
https://www.planetf1.com/news/villeneuve-williams-is-dead/
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They're definitely in an alarming position right now, but I tend to ignore JV comments/observations at the best of times, so let's hope they find some answers ... SOON!!!!
Best Regards,
Cal :)
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I respectfully disagree with the mouthy one. Williams are having a poor year, but talk of their demise happens regularly and Claire was not being criticised when the team improved under her leadership. I need to see a few more years of this level of form before I write them off.
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Kinda strange ain't it that JV should heap the blame on Claire? :confused: As Luke says she's been pretty successful, in mid field team terms I mean without works support, over a number of years.
The team's woes seemed to start around the time Paddy came into the picture, sure he has a long record of being a key man in top teams but for whatever reason this time his direction has led the team into this malaise.
IMHO Paddy has become so entrenched in the big team corporate style and funds, he finds the old school - work the base with what you've got and think outside the box for the rest - very difficult.
Not sure what the cure is but writing Williams obituary seems way off the mark to me.
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Me too. I would ditch Paddy long before Claire.
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Over the years many teams have complained that their wind tunnel results don't match their real world experience. I think I read that Williams is having that problem. The wing stalling is usually due to the airflow being disturbed or having the wing too flat. Hopefully they will sort it out.
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Maybe Williams could borrow Adrian for a small fee? :D
Seriously though, would I be correct in stating that during Claire W's early days at the controls, Massa and Bottas were battling for podium positions on a regular basis?? ... so clearly, the failure would point at the changing demands of a current day F1 car, rather than general leadership of a team.
I do agree, Paddy doesn't strike me as a valuable asset to the team!
Best Regards,
Cal :)
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Villeneuve IS the expert on choosing the wrong person to run an F1 team. Loyalty to friends and family isn't something he should fault.
I doubt that Williams is 'dead' though. I believe their business as a whole can survive the downturn and their history is enough to attract talent who would love to put their stamp in the sport.
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I can't take anything JV says seriously - he is always mouthing off about something and his views are almost always rubbish!
No doubt Williams are in a seriously bad position - they have a great engine but still have no performance (slow in the corners + slow on the straights!!).
As far as I know, Paddy has enjoyed his good days when he was part of a management team. He has never struck me as being a brilliant individual such as Newey.
However, as long as Williams get enough money from the sponsors I see no reason why they cannot get back to being a good mid-pack team. To do anything more than that I think they will need a manufacturer to get involved.
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I think most people want William's to return to
being a top tier team which doesn't look likely.
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Maybe JV should re-invest the millions Williams paid him to drive a car that could have driven itself to a championship, back into the team that gave him the chance. In the meantime he should stop pretending to be a journalist unless he learns how to be one ;)
Not a fan.
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Nicely put Scott :good:
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Williams is in bad shape, but it still has life left in it. On the other hand, JV's credibility has been stone dead for quite some time.
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Jacques Villeneuve was, in my view, the most undeserving Formula 1 world champion of all time. His subsequent results in less competitive cars and his constant mouthing off about a whole variety of people and issues that he knows very little about also highlight the sort of person that he is off the track. I think that his various comments down the years say a lot more about him than about the people he is referring to.
Williams is not having a good season on track, but the team has bounced back from such problems before. The team struggled very badly in 2006 and 2011, only to bounce back in subsequent years. The car was much more competitive last year and it just seems as though the team has made a serious mistake with the design of this year's car. I expect a more competitive showing next season.
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I think the problem is the perception of there being so many things going wrong all at the exact same time:
Coming last this year on current form.
Losing Stroll and his money.
Losing Martini and their money.
Sacking/losing key personnel throughout the season (de Beer, Wood).
Having the worst drivers on the grid.
Williams have come through bad times and prospered so I can only hope my favourite team manage it again. I am confident with Lowe on board, despite the abomination the team created this year. They need an experienced driver next year though to lead from the front on track and that will cost money they don't have.
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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.
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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...
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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 :tease:
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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.
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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.