Quote:
Originally Posted by javadog
Williams was successful when they had some of the big names in F1 design on their payroll and when it didn't take 2000 people to put a winning car on the grid. Not to mention the top drivers they had, too.
Funny how when they don't have either the top designers or drivers they run in the back half of the grid.
I wish the new owners well but I'm not optimistic about their chances.
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I think that holds true for all teams today. Actually, I think it has always held true. Over the history of the sport, we used to see one particularly clever designer dominate the sport. The modern equivalent is a team of very competent engineers with endless resources, the one with the better (and highest paid) engineers and access to resources now dominates. And it seems in a somewhat "chicken or the egg" question that the clever designer (or team of engineers with endless resources) precedes the top drivers' arrivals on any given team. Williams were not attracting real driving talent until Patrick Head showed up. After he arrived, they pretty much had their choice of drivers.
I think the margins have gotten so slim these days that the "intuitive" geniuses like Patrick Head, and before him maybe Colin Chapman, are simply out-classed by sheer engineering "horsepower" - the ability of a team to employ many very good engineers and design, test, develop through countless (expensive) iterations. That process will eventually defeat the team that is relying upon a more "seat of the pants" intuitive approach.
And that is where Williams, I believe, fell behind. They simply never had the capital to take the "grind it out" approach, and were only good when clever intuition could give them a leg up. It's just too locked down today, both by the rules and also by the level of refinement the sport has now reached.