Mid-life Crisis

Williams is celebrating 40 years in Formula 1 with a type number that reflects the anniversary – but is the FW40 stuck in a conceptual rut, and can Williams become a top-line team again? Racecar investigates.

- Sam Collins

Williams is the last independent team in Formula 1 with the owner’s name still above the garage door. It’s been around a while, too, and this year Frank Williams’ eponymous outfit celebrates its 40th anniversary – only Ferrari and McLaren have a longer continuous record in grand prix racing.

Fittingly, the team has named its car FW40 to celebrate this anniversary (if tradition was followed it would be called the FW39). But the team’s anniversary year has not all been about looking back, it’s also seen significant upheaval at the team’s headquarters in Grove, England.

Williams’ former technical boss Pat Symonds retired at the end of the 2016 and in something of a coup for the team he was replaced by Paddy Lowe, who headed up the Mercedes F1 technical team throughout its period of dominance from 2014 to 2016.

Lowe arrived at Williams when the design and development of the FW40 was essentially completed and so did not have much of an influence on it. But it was possible for him to compare the approach of Williams to recent regulation changes to that of the current World Champions. ‘When I arrived it was interesting to see how people had reached different technical solutions to the problems faced by all of the teams,’ Lowe says. ‘There is quite a lot difference between the two cars [Mercedes and Williams]. Some of that we need to change in 2018, but in other areas Williams clearly has a strong pedigree in design going back many years and they have developed in certain directions which are different, not necessarily better or worse. I think the main point I found was that there was lots of opportunity for next year, there are a few things we definitely need to do differently.

‘I think in some areas of the company Williams is better than Mercedes, and the same is true for some bits of the car too,’ Lowe adds.