Formula One is seeing unprecedented times. At the recent Sao Paulo Grand Prix, qualifying was postponed from its regular Saturday slot and listed for sunrise on Sunday morning. 

Further due to the torrential rain expected on race day, the mandated four hour time period between qualifying and the race was shortened to two and a half hours which meant Williams did not have the time to rebuild Alex Albon’s car following his crash in qualifying.

Moving a Grand Prix forward an hour and a half was also unprecedented in the modern era as the sport is highly sensitive to the scheduling of the TV companies who bring in around 25% of F1’s revenue.

 

 

 

Williams disaster in Mexico and Brazil

For Williams the entire weekend was a disaster. Their chief rivals, Alpine had been having a miserable season but in Brazil the team found its Samba mojo. Pierre Gasly collected two points in the Sprint before the heavens opened. 

Then in a remarkable turn of events which nobody predicted, Ocon and Gasly came home in second and third during the Grand Prix claiming a massive haul of 35 points for the weekend to add to the fourteen they had collected over the previous 20 race weekends.

In treacherous conditions on Sunday morning Alex Albon put his Williams into the top 10, but a huge incident before the end of Q3 meant he would not take his P7 place on the grid for the race.

Williams were once the perennial cash strapped team on the brink of running out of money, but a cash injection from Dorilton and the arrival of James Vowles as team principal has changed all that.

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No longer F1’s cash strapped team

Whilst Williams now have a surplus each year of around $20m over and above the cost cap of $145m which they now spend. Yet as Vowles explained during the summer, another cost cap was introduced which few discuss and this restricted the amount of capital investment a team can make in its infrastructure.

“At Mercedes we had about $300 million-worth of equipment that Williams does not have. That’s locked in and no one else would ever catch that up. And even if they could, imagine how long it takes you to spend $300 million, get the money together, put it in place.

“That’s why the big teams signed up to the cost cap very quickly. And, for small teams, what it meant is that we’re fighting really with one arm behind our back by comparison.”

F1 teams do have a capital allowance of $36m which can be spent over a four year cycle but this year Williams challenged the FIA to consider smaller teams being allowed to play catch up. Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur described the final outcome which allows teams like Williams to spend between $6-20m more than their bigger rivals on infrastructure projects, subject to FIA approval.

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Exemption for smaller teams from cost cap

While Vowles described this as “not perhaps the hundred [million] I was looking for, but a good step in the right direction”, he sees it as a big boost for Williams.”

Despite having cash to spare over and above the two different cost caps, Williams may be set to miss the Las Vegas Grand Prix due to the crash damage their drivers have inflicted on the cars in the recent triple header.

Alex Albon found the walls at the Mexico City Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez twice, firstly in practice one and then again even before the first turn of the Grand Prix. The Thai-British driver then added a massive shunt during Sao Paulo qualifying meant with the reduced time frame between quali and the race he failed to start.

Rookie Franco Colapinto added to Williams woes hitting the barriers in qualifying and during a safety car period during the Grand Prix which ended his race.

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Inventory low in Grove

The problem for Williams is that at this point in the season, F1 teams are not carrying the levels of inventory for replacement parts that they do earlier in the year. Reports from Grove now suggest the headache for Williams is not cash related but a simple matter of time required to produce the required components for both cars to take to the circuit in Vegas.

There is also the cost cap to consider given Williams have their three drivers from the season in the top 9 of the F1 destructor league. Accumulated damage from the three is estimated to be around $9,466,750. Even Sergio Perez who is top of the table in crash damage has racked up only $4,861,000.

James Vowles reveals the damage is beyond cash allocations and even potential cost cap breaches and is merely a matter of logistics as the team struggles to replicate the replacement parts required.

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“No team” can deal with such crash damage

“There is no team on the starting grid that can easily deal with five serious accidents in two consecutive GPs,” is reported saying to Williams staff. “The spare parts we have available are simply not enough to withstand such an amount of damage. I had high hopes for Las Vegas as we were fast there last year and I’m sure the car will work well in those conditions.”

“We will do our best to bring the two cars to the track in the best possible specification and with enough parts,” concluded Vowles.

Teams could pick and chose which Grand Prix they attended before the Concorde Agreement came into force. Frustrated promoters would get upset if their favoured team did not attend their event so the agreement which is legally binding came into force mandating every team must attend each scheduled F1 weekend.

So Williams will be in Las Vegas, whether they can run two of their latest specification cars is highly doubtful following Vowles assessment, but at least one car must make it onto the track in practice to fulfil their contractual obligations, but to all intent and purpose Williams could well be out of the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix.

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Wolff reveals he chose not to intervene during Hamilton/Ferrari talks

Lewis Hamilton is set for a historic link up with Formula One’s longest standing team next season. The announcement he was leaving Mercedes just months into what was billed as a two year deal shook the F1 world to its core, particularly since the Scuderia have on of the sport’s brightest young talents in Monegasque, Charles Leclerc.

Since the São Paulo Grand Prix, Wolff has made a number of revelations regarding Hamilton’s exit the most shocking being he knew of the talks taking place between the parties, but did nothing to persuade his star driver to remain with the Mercedes team.

Wolff explains how a conversation with Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola swung his decision to allow Hamilton leave and the Mercedes boss also questioned the “shelf life” of the seven times world champion, clearly reflected in the one plus one year’s contract negotiated last autumn… READ MORE