Paul Jeffrey
Premium
Williams Deputy Team Principle Claire Williams “Embarrassed” by the team’s difficult start to pre-season testing.
With Williams having finally managed to get their new FW42 Formula One car onto the circuit at Barcelona, a full two and a half days later than the rest of their rivals, Deputy Team Principle Claire Williams has admitted embarrassment at how the team have failed to produce the new car on time alongside the rest of the 2019 field.
“This is not a situation that we anticipated,” said Williams. “It’s certainly not a situation that we ever wanted to find ourselves in.
“We’re not just disappointed. It’s embarrassing not bringing a race car to a circuit when everyone else has managed to do that, particularly a team like ours that has managed to bring a race car to testing for the past 40-odd years.
“So we can only apologise. I would apologise to our fans, I would apologise to all the people that have had the pressure really dialled up on them at Grove over the past few days to get everything ready, just to get us to this point today, and mostly to George and Robert [Kubica], who were looking forward to a car on Monday so that they could prepare and have the most amount of time possible to prepare ahead of the season.”
“So we can only apologise. I would apologise to our fans, I would apologise to all the people that have had the pressure really dialled up on them at Grove over the past few days to get everything ready, just to get us to this point today, and mostly to George and Robert [Kubica], who were looking forward to a car on Monday so that they could prepare and have the most amount of time possible to prepare ahead of the season.”
Although having now managed to get things up and running at Barcelona, clocking over 20 laps in total thanks to George Russell, Williams have failed to record any serious long run action, mostly concentrating on performing shakedown runs and acclimatisation with the FW42 – essentially completing the checks most teams undertook as part of their running during various filming days prior to testing beginning on Monday.
With rumours circulating in the paddock that the issues at Williams could be far deeper than meets the eye, Claire was understandably reluctant to go into detail about the circumstances that have put the former championship winning team at this early disadvantage, claiming the squad prefer to keep their own counsel about internal issues back at the team HQ in Grove.
“But I am not going to go into any detail as to why that happened. I don’t think that it’s appropriate to discuss the ins and outs of what went wrong. Completing that inquest anyway has not happened at Grove yet.
“We’re clearly aware of some of the issues, but it’s too early in the day to start discussing them in any detail and probably something that we wouldn’t do anyway.
“We need to resolve what went wrong or analyse what went wrong, and then to resolve it so that this doesn’t happen again at Williams.”
“We’re clearly aware of some of the issues, but it’s too early in the day to start discussing them in any detail and probably something that we wouldn’t do anyway.
“We need to resolve what went wrong or analyse what went wrong, and then to resolve it so that this doesn’t happen again at Williams.”
Williams now have just five more days of testing at Barcelona before the new cars head out for the opening round of the new season, set to take place on Sunday 17th March at the Australian Albert Park circuit.
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