|
Well it's now
2025 and time for me to look back at the 2024 Formula 1 season for Williams
Racing.
To sum up the 2024 season for Williams it has to be seen as one of so many
major challenges, both on and off the track, some encouraging performances
and then the most significant has to be the major shift in the direction of
the team under the leadership of Team Principal James Vowles.
We would see the team finish 9th in the Constructors championship in 2024
with just 17 points, falling back from their seventh place in 2023. So many
factors contributed to the teams change in fortunes from the significant
reshaping of the teams management and infrastructure in their Grove factory,
changes in drivers, delays in updates coming to the FW46 as well as the
extensive issues caused by numerous crashes during the season.
2024 would see Team Principal James Vowles emphasising the teams longer term
plans which put forward the view that the team was working more towards
ensuring their future successes and acknowledging that 2024 was going to be a
season of limited results. Over the course of the 2024 season James
continued to promote his vision that 2024 was a time of re-building for the
Williams team and that it may even take until 2026 before the team would
achieve notable success. His optimism for the future was reinforced with the
signing of Carlos Sainz joining the team for 2025.
For James 2024 was very much one of focusing on off-track developments and
operational improvements which could result in limited on-track success but he also gave
his support to the view that the team was still working hard to achieve the
best on-track results it could in 2024.
James commented: “As we discussed at the beginning of the year, we made some
monumental changes in what we're doing internally and, by the way, still
are. But the result of that was we didn't produce a car on the weight limit,
which really hurt us in that first part of the year. So, I think it's fair
to say there's more progress than the championship position would
highlight.”
So how did we fare and what challenges did the team have to contend with in
2024.
Our best finish was courtesy of a seventh in Azerbaijan with Alex Albon.
Alex was backed up by new team-mate Franco Colapinto in eighth. The vast
majority of the teams season points were achieved in this one race.
Alex Albon should be considered the standout driver for Williams with
several points scoring finishes which emphasised his importance to the
team. But any comparison to the team's second driver was difficult to make
as the team had two periods firstly with Logan Sargeant starting the 2024 season
and then the second when Logan was replaced by Franco Colapinto for the final nine races.
In pure numbers Alex was well ahead of Logan across both qualifying and in the races. But for Franco
the gap would close when it came to their respective race results.
Qualifying: Albon 13-0 Sargeant Albon 7-2 Colapinto
Race: Albon 11-2 Sargeant Albon 4-4 Colapinto
Logan Sergeant was retained for the 2024 season but as the season progressed
it became apparent that Logan as again failing to deliver and after a major
crash by Logan at the Dutch GP it was decided to replace him with
Argentinean Franco Colapinto who was running in Formulas 2 as a Williams
Academy driver. With the arrival of Franco the teams points position took a
step forward but they also had to contend with a series of crashes across
both Alex and Franco which would see their points chase suffer in the later
stages of the season.
As for the performance of Franco
he would certainly make an impression on the F1 paddock such that their is a
strongly held view that he will return to Formula One very soon. With the
signing of Sainz by Williams for 2025 unfortunately Franco did not secure a
drive with the team in 2025 despite his performances.
But the mid-season driver change,
despite the promising performance from Colapinto, did add to the teams inconsistency.
Ideally the team would have been far better off running with Colapinto right
from the start of the season.
Aside from the issues with their drivers the most significant factor in the
teams season was how it was littered with numerous crashes across all three
team drivers which had a major impact of their teams championship positions
come season end.
The worst
weekend in regard to the number of crashes had to be in Brazil where the
team suffered three significant crashes in a single day. Albon and Colapinto
both crashed out in the delayed Sunday morning qualifying session and then
come the race Franco would again crash. Add onto this the Las Vegas weekend
and the team suffered six crashes in three race weekends.
James would comment:
“There’s no doubt about it – I think teams aren’t built to take what is six
major crashes.”
Aside from the
issue of repairing the damaged cars the number of crashes would also play a
significant part in delaying the development of the FW46. Given that the
FW46 was overweight on its arrival on the Bahrain grid this saw the team
struggle to achieve outright performance gains as it worked to bring the car
inline with its underweight competitors.
It was not until later in the
season that we were able to see the first update focusing on bringing
performance to the car. But the team was hampered by further damaged
cars which again delayed any progress in bringing performance gains to the car.
Added onto this was the
significant impact that the repairs was having on the team Cost Cap budget
which again hampered the team's ability to bring updates to the car. There
was also the concern that this would have an impact on the teams 2025 season
as well, but we are yet to see the evidence of this.
But for James
Vowles even with the tough results later in the season he still expressed
his view that the team was making a lot of progress behind the scenes which
was a positive thing as the team prepares for 2025.
Going forward into 2025 we saw quite a few positive thing take place in 2024
in preparation for this season, the most notable been the signing of Carlos
Sainz.
Team Principal James Vowles
spoke repeatedly of his happiness in securing Carlos for 2025.
James commented: “In Alex and
Carlos we will have one of the most formidable driver line-ups on the grid
and with huge experience to guide us into the new regulations in 2026."
To sum up the teams 2024 ninth-placed
finish in the Constructors Championship one could say it was a disappointing
result seeing the team drop from their seventh in 2023. But equally the long
term nature of what James was trying to achieve in rebuilding the team was
viewed as been more important. James was prepared to accept a drop off in
results for the sake of seeing the team in a far better position in the
years ahead. 2024 was very much about creating a better team both in the
factory and at the track. Time will tell how successful James plans are and
what they deliver in the years ahead.
If Williams can eliminate the crashes, which I feel that they have a far
better chance of seeing happen with Carlos and Alex behind the wheel, as
well as continuing their off-track developments in terms of technology and
processes I can see that James prediction of 2028 seeing Williams return to
race wins is a realistic goal.
There was the view that while the season was disappointing, it set the
stage for better subsequent years. |
