Trebling budget wouldn’t have improved 2018 FW41 car – Claire Williams
Claire Williams believes her Formula 1 team’s 2018 car was so flawed that it would have been difficult to improve “even if we had tripled” the budget.
Williams finished 10th and last in the constructors’ championship in 2018, the team’s worst result in its long history.
Both Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin struggled to get to grips with the underperforming FW41 last season and were only able to score points on two occasions, in Azerbaijan and Italy.
“I think the problems were related to the global car, if you like – we’ve had issues front to back,” deputy team principal Williams told MN.
“So to try and make changes to bring performance to a car that was like that was always going to be difficult.
“We tried and we tried hard. It wasn’t through a lack of hard work, energy, motivation, I suppose it was just the flaws were too fundamental to rectify halfway through a season.”
Chief technical officer Paddy Lowe added: “It’s been a very tough season for the team, but also for me personally, I would say one of the toughest years that I’d had in F1. But on the good side I think we found the bottom of the trench in terms of performance. That is actually a healthy process for the team to go through for the long term.”