2022 Points scored whenever Williams had the chance

The 2002 Formula One season was on paper one where the Williams Racing Team would come away last in the Constructors championship with the teams drivers also finishing a corresponding last in the drivers championship. Coming from this was the question of how the 2022 season could be viewed for the Williams team. Was it a step forward by the team when compared to the seasons previous or was it a major disappointment coming from the expectation that the 2022 regulations would allow the team the opportunity to make significant forward progress.

The 2022 season would see George Russell make his expected departure to be replaced by ex Red Bull driver Alex Albon. His team-mate would again be Nicholas Latifi who was in his third year with the team. On the commercial front there was the positive news with Williams announcing a partnership deal with the battery manufacturer Duracell joined later on by Bang & Olfsen.

The 2022 season got off to a mixed start in Bahrain with Nicholas qualifying last but for Alex he would make it into Q2 and would start from 14th finishing 13th. This was very much the story of the year when it came to comparing the two drivers.

But the next race would see further disappointment with both Alex and Nicholas struggling in qualifying and to top it all off both would retire from the race. For Australia the team would again struggle with Alex and Nicholas only managing 19th and 20th in qualifying. Alex had managed 16th but would be disqualified due to a fuel sample infringement. Come the race we would see the team apply a very interesting strategy with Alex running on the hard tyre for the whole race except the penultimate lap where he would pit changing to the soft tyre and was able to finish 10th. This would be Williams’ first point of the season.

The next race in Imola would see the team fail to secure any points but it was close for Alex who came home in 11th. The race very much followed the general theme of Alex producing notable results but for Nicholas it was again a difficult time. In Miami qualifying was again a struggle but as in Australia Alex was able to use the hard compound seeing him move from 19th to finish 10th. This would become ninth as Alonso was given a post-race penalty.

The opening series of races had been what I would consider to be a positive run but the next few races would see both Alex and Nicholas score any points. Qualifying would see neither driver get beyond Q1 but it was always the case of Alex leading Nicholas. As for the races it was always the case of Alex dominating and the Azerbaijan and Canadian races would see him finish just outside the points.

For the British race Williams introduced a significant update package with the introduction of Red Bull style sidepods as well as other major aerodynamic changes. The only issue was that this update was only on Alex's car but with a rain affected qualifying we would get to see Nicholas qualify 10th. Come the race Nicholas in the older model FW44 was able to finish 12th while the team was not able to assess the new car as Alex was involved in a crash very early on in the race.

For Austria Alex continued to be the only Williams running the new improved package seeing him finish an encouraging 12th being well ahead of Nicholas over the weekend. France would see both Alex and Nicholas able to run with the new updated FW44 but the only things of note was Alex taking the new car to 13th in qualifying and the race. Again Alex was well ahead of Nicholas over the weekend which was very much continued to be the norm of the season so far.

The next series of races would see William come away with what was overall an improvement over the opening 2022 races with some more consistent performances being put in. Hungary was pretty much a disappointment but the team would go on to secure the first of three points finishes with Alex finishing 10th in Belgium after qualifying ninth. Alex was able to use the impressive top speed of the updated FW44 to keep in front of a group of cars late in the Belgian race. Italy would see Alex have to hand over his drive to Nyck de Vries due to illness but Monza the team was able to again use the updated FW44 to good effect with De Vries starting from eighth place to finish an impressive ninth.

Singapore was a weekend that saw the team fail to deliver as they struggled for pace at the Marina Bay circuit. But next was Japan and the team would secure their final points of the season with a 9th for Nicholas. The result came from a strategy call that saw Nicholas change from full wets to intermediates very early in the race and this performance gained would set him up for the best result for him of 2022.

The final series of races would see Williams fail to secure any further points while on top of this the team would announce that Nicholas was being released and would be replaced. His replacement would ultimately turn out to see Logan Sargeant.

In evaluating the Williams 2022 season I suppose one should look at those occasions when there were moments of note, results that even though they were not significant in terms of the points scored they still saw the team achieve a result that was positive for a team. In evaluating 2022 it should be done not forgetting the struggled the team has had for the last few seasons. In 2022 the first of these occasions had to be Albon's point scoring result in the Australian Grand Prix, after a race strategy that would see Alex only pit once on the last lap seeing him finish tenth.

The next moment was a further points result in the Miami Grand Prix where Albon would finish ninth. We would also see other achievements even though they may not have been points scoring ones such as Nicholas achieving his first ever Q3 appearance at the British Grand Prix where he would go on to finish twelfth. In the Belgian Grand Prix we would see Alex qualify ninth and with other driver penalties he would start from sixth going on in the race with what would be the teams third point finishing result with a tenth place.

For Alex his Italian Grand Prix was notable in that he had to withdraw due to illness suffering from appendicitis. Williams would replace him with Nyck de Vries and in his first ever qualifying session would go onto achieve a thirteenth place, starting from eighth and would go on to finish ninth, scoring points on his debut.

But the season was also notable for those moments where the team really failed to deliver the most notable of these in the early season races was the lack of performance from the radical FW44 design with its short sidepods. It appeared that right from the start that this design was far from the most competitive. This would see the team forced to carry out a major design change but even with this it still saw the team struggling for pace when compared to their rivals who had continued to make more progress than Williams over the course of the season.

Despite this for Albon he believed that Williams scored points every time they had the opportunity to. He was of the view that the team still capitalised on the few opportunities they had during the season. For me the biggest problem was the lack of opportunities over the course of the 2022 season.

Albon commented: "I really do feel like in the moments where we’ve had the chance to score points, we have. Unfortunately, that’s where we are this year. It’s been a year where we’ve had everything to go perfectly for us, a bit of fortune as well, and that gets us into the points. We don’t want that to happen next year, we need to work hard, we need to really nail the balance issues that we’ve been having this year and if we can get on top of that, I feel like as a team we always seem to be maximising opportunities and that’s good.”

For the then Team Principal Jost Capito in an interview with RacingNews365.com, he looked back at the 2022 season coming away with an optimistic assessment of the performances of the team.

"Last year, everybody was happy if we got into Q2, now everybody is not satisfied if we can't get into Q3," Capito explained.

"They will see the difference in that the expectations of the team are rising - and that is a must if you want to be competitive. The expectations must be high.

"We are 10th in the championship, scoring the points we did on merit, and not like last year when we were a bit lucky to get most of our points, like at Spa.

"This year, we got the points on merit and were consistently getting into Q2 and stretching for Q3. To progress through the season from where we started, to where we ended up after our upgrade was okay for us."

Capito also looked back at the other gains made buy the team in the lead-up and during the 2022 season. Jost was of the view that operationally the team had made significant steps forward such as in the area of race strategy. Jost reflected back on the Australian and Japanese races where Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi were able to make the best of strategies to secure what were considered quite unlikely points.

Alex ran a strategy in Australia that would see him pit for his mandatory stop on the final lap to finish 10th, while Nicholas scored two points at a wet Suzuka on a strategy call where the team would pit Nicholas early to be amongst the first to switch from full wet tyres to Intermediates.

Jost added: "I see the working of the race team, and we had brilliant strategy."

"We never did a real mistake all season and what is really good is the communication within the team and the trust that is now developing.

"Coming in as team principal and having a new sporting director coming in... it is disturbing because I want things done different to what the team is used to and then the sporting director brings different things.

"You have to live together, and you have to form the team.

"We are now there where everybody enjoys what they do and we can take risky strategies - and there is the trust of management backing it up even if it goes wrong. It is much more fun working here now than before."

In a further interview with GPFans Jost put a lot of the blame on the teams previous management and internal work flows.

As for whether the team can overcome these issues Jost added: "It's very difficult to say. We have to see what kind of step we can do next year, that we see how good our processes are, and how good our tools are compared to the competition.

"During this year, we got pretty close to the midfield. We could sometimes score points without having a big pressure ahead of us.

“So we made good progress this year and we should be able to keep this speed. If we're able to keep this speed, we should make small steps, let's say, beginning of next year, and then see how we can progress the development over next year.

"That's then the proof that we are on the right track.”

Speaking of the 2022 season in an interview Jost added: "It was a very long and hard season, and still everybody is trying to recover. We didn't finish where we wanted to, and we saw after the summer break that we wouldn't get up the grid from 10th, and so we focussed on next year's car.

"Let's see how it pays off. I think we have to have a better year next year. We changed a lot internally, how we engineer and develop the car and also the investment from 2021 – all that should be reflected in our performance."

So on reflection the changes to the team's management structure and internal process within the team may not have beared fruit as much as hoped in 2022 but from this perspective it was the first season truly with the team functioning under this new regime.

The big hope must now be that these changes will see the teams fortunes charge markedly in the 2023 season. But the first major hurdle has to be the design and production of a car that is competitive right from the start of the season In Bahrain.