Formula 1 Preseason Report #1 – Williams Racing

Does The Sport’s Most Secretive Ownership Have a Plan?

While the start of the Formula One season is still roughly a month away, we’re already in preseason mode here at AutoRacingDigest.com.

Over the next four weeks leading up to the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix (March 3-5), our exceptional F1 expert, Gregg Fielding, will break down each of the 10 teams that will take part in the global chase for the championship.

We start the series today from the bottom up, namely, last season’s last-place finisher: Williams Racing. Enjoy!

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2023 marks the third year of the Dorilton Capital era of Williams Racing – or more commonly known simply as just “Williams – and while the team has a new driver in American ex-pat Logan Sargeant, and a new car that has been the team’s sole focus since July, they enter the new year missing one vital part – someone in charge.

The team has been characteristically tight-lipped since announcing the departure of Jost Capito on December 12 (along with Technical Director FX Demaison), the man they had lured out of retirement to try and pull the team out of the depths to which they had sunk under the final years of management by the Williams family.

After rising to a somewhat surprising eighth-place finish in 2021, the team dropped back to last in 2022, a position they had held the three seasons prior to ‘21, finishing the year with an anemic eight points.

Whether the current era of Formula 1 is a blessing or a curse for the Oxfordshire, U.K. team is hard to tell at this point. The sport’s explosive global expansion has meant that the team’s value as an investment has been on the rise, but at the same time it has perhaps lessened the urgency to show on-track results.

And while the new cost-cap is designed to keep powerhouses like Ferrari and Mercedes from staying ahead by simply outspending smaller teams, it also has meant an outfit at the back of the field is limited in the ways in which they can catch up.

While the team’s supporters who remember the glory days of Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill winning championships are still around, it’s hard to imagine what would get the young fans who have been flocking to the sport interested in a team that’s won only a single race in the past 17 years, with that one win now more than 10 years in the past.

And unlike nearly every other team in the paddock there’s no consumer brand associated with Williams, with the other exception being relative newcomer Haas, who can at least try and lay claim to the American fanbase.

So, with uncertain leadership, is there any hope for a team that’s spent five years consigned to the back of the field?

Maybe.

When the team announced after the British Grand Prix that with last place in 2022 being a certainty that they would end work on the then-current car, it did allow them to shift some of those cap-limited resources to the 2023 effort, perhaps giving them the only possible advantage available over the other teams.

But success this season won’t be measured by competing in the standings or for race wins, but in trimming the enormous gap that has existed between the team’s place in the sport and relevance. New driver Sargeant is coming off a fourth-place season in Formula 2, and isn’t considered a hot-shot prospect.

But at only 22 years old, there’s at least hope that he can equal or better teammate Alex Albon – unlike the previous inhabitant of that seat, the affable but non-competitive Nicholas Latifi, who had spent the previous three years paying for the privilege of trying to keep the car running for a full race.

As for Albon, the departure of Capito likely means that if the car is an improvement over previous efforts, the 26-year-old driver will need to prove he’s capable of being the talent that was once believed to be the future at Red Bull, or he could find himself unemployed once again in 2024.

Albon is in danger of falling into the category of “steady hand”, the type of driver every team would be glad to have as a reserve, but not having the desired ceiling necessary to occupy one of the very scarce seats in competitive cars. His new contract with the team does run “beyond 2023”, but wouldn’t stop a motivated owner from making a switch if they thought they had a better opportunity.

However, the fact remains that we don’t know exactly how motivated ownership is to bring the team to the next level (and maybe one day back to the top of the sport). Capito gave interviews in November and December in which he said the expected things about improving the car and keeping expectations in check, before his sudden departure from the team, which was referred to as a “retirement” by Dorilton in a brief statement.

Whatever else the team’s higher-ups are thinking, they’re choosing to keep to themselves. The two-member “team board” includes James Matthews, perhaps best known for being the billionaire husband of British Royal Pippa Middleton, but who is also a former racing driver (reaching as high as British Formula 3) and perhaps could be determined to restore the glory of the team.

Or maybe not. The board might also be perfectly happy letting the team value rise with the plan of selling to someone else down the line. We really have no idea. With the three highest paid staff members excluded from the cost-cap, our best chance to find out may be when the new team principal is announced, and we see if the team opens up the checkbook to lure a big name from another team or just picks someone capable of keeping the files in order.

Though with options being limited right now, they may well push whatever their plans are forward to 2024.

2022 Results:

Team finish: 10th place in constructor standings, eight points scored, 27 points behind ninth.

Driver Results:

* Alex Albon – 19th in driver standings, 4 points scored, best finish – ninth (Miami)

* Nicolas Lattifi - 20th in driver standings, 2 points scored, best finish – ninth (Japan)

* Nyck de Vries (reserve driver) – competed in one race, finished ninth (two points)

Predictions for 2023:

Baring the collapse of another team, Williams will again finish 10th and last, although with more points, point scoring races, and better qualifying than 2022. I expect Sargeant and Albon to be good enough to earn a return for 2024, which is when I would think the team would be aiming to show real improvement.

Williams has the facilities in place to succeed and the Formula 1 cost-cap means they shouldn’t be at any financial deficit, so the question right now is do they have the desire to be competitive, and can they find the right person to steer the ship?