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Sleeping giants
3 years ago
Both Willams and McLaren undervalued the brilliant Adrian Newey
Then there were the financial challenges. Williams and McLaren once dominated F1’s commercial landscape and played their part in pushing budgets up, but to varying degrees found themselves outgunned as yet more money flooded in. Williams felt the squeeze first with the loss of its BMW deal, which also led to the loss of title sponsor HP, at the end of 2005. BMW wanted full control, which meant ownership, and Williams wasn’t willing to sell. BMW acquired Sauber and Williams was reduced to a customer team, a status that continues to this day. It at least now has stability having used Mercedes engines since 2014, but in the nine years before that it hopped from BMW, to Cosworth, to Toyota, back to Cosworth and then to Renault. It also suffered financial hardship after the impact of the Covid pandemic meant Williams ran out of credit. The company was acquired by New York-based Dorilton Capital in 2020.
McLaren stayed competitive, commercially and on track, for longer. But it wasn’t to last. Its partner, Mercedes, sold its 40 per cent stake in the team, after changing tactics and buying Brawn to create its own factory operation. A revival of a works deal with Honda in 2015 brought in significant cash and promised a competitive engine, but the alliance proved disastrous. Honda certainly underperformed, but McLaren made the mistake of ignoring its own technical limitations and blamed all its ills on propulsion. The switch to Renault engines in 2018 proved a rude awakening and laid bare serious technical weaknesses.
Both Williams and McLaren have also experienced changes in leadership, not only in terms of personnel but also style. At their peak, they were led by powerful owner/team bosses with huge personalities and celebrated idiosyncrasies – Frank Williams and Ron Dennis. Today, they are more modern, corporate entities but still with their own distinct approaches.
"Lando Norris recently signed a new deal to remain at the team in the long-term and cited Andrea Stella’s influence – ‘how Andrea turned things round last year’, as he put it – as part of the motivation for doing so. It’s also said to have helped persuade last year’s star rookie, Oscar Piastri, to commit to a long-term deal"
At McLaren, the Dennis role is effectively split in two. Andrea Stella took over as team principal ahead of last season, with his focus on the engineering and racing side of the team. American Zak Brown, as CEO, deals with the rest and brings his magic touch at acquiring sponsors.
Stella has proved a hit, playing a key role in the on-track turnaround last year and inspiring confidence in his troops. Lando Norris recently signed a new deal to remain at the team in the long-term and cited Stella’s influence – ‘how Andrea turned things round last year’, as he put it – as part of the motivation for doing so. It’s also said to have helped persuade last year’s star rookie, Oscar Piastri, to commit to a long-term deal.
At Williams, James Vowles took over as team principal last year. He brought vast experience as one of Toto Wolff’s key Mercedes lieutenants and combines sharp racing instincts with a clear vision for how the organisation should be run at a corporate level. That combination is essential to success in F1, and is reflected by the confidence he engenders in new recruits. For example, the vastly experienced Pat Fry turned his back on Alpine to join Williams as chief technical officer based largely on Vowles’ vision.
“When Dorilton Capital bought Williams, it immediately started to spend on refreshing the facilities, but as this process began much later than it did for McLaren the limitations of the cost cap that was introduced in 2020 have slowed the rate of change"
‘James is pushing hard to improve this place,’ says Fry. ‘The board is fully behind him and that’s the thing that excites me. We’re not limited in what we can achieve.
‘The way I’d like to develop Williams is very much aligned with him. There’s four things that make a team: the people, the tools, the methodology, and the most important is team spirit, how you go about creating that culture where you take risks. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough and it’s trying to create that environment where people feel empowered to make brave decisions.’
Then there’s the question of facilities. Both teams fell behind in this area, but recently have made significant investment. McLaren has become more potent thanks to a new state-of-the-art wind tunnel coming online in its Bond-villain-lair MTC headquarters in Woking. It also has a new driver-in-loop simulator, composites department and improved machine shop. And all of this is led by its newly established trio of technical directors, with long-time McLaren man Peter Prodromou overseeing aerodynamics, David Sanchez arriving from Ferrari to head up car concept, and Rob Marshall signed from Red Bull to oversee engineering.
Those who remember the infamous McLaren ‘matrix’ technical management structure imported from aerospace might wince, but the philosophy behind this is subtly different. As Stella puts it, it’s about ensuring the team’s best technical minds aren’t diluted by the sheer scale of the management challenge and can make the most of the team’s potential.
Williams still needs to invest in bringing its facilities up to scratch
Williams is a long way behind when it comes to its technical facilities. When Dorilton Capital bought the team, it immediately started to spend on refreshing the facilities, but as this process began much later than it did for McLaren the limitations of the cost cap that was introduced in 2020 have slowed the rate of change. The cost cap doesn’t only limit operational expenditure, but also capital expenditure. An impressive feather in Vowles’ cap was that he led the push for an increase in the latter, which grants teams at the level of Williams an extra $20m spending headroom on facilities over the coming years. The irony is that a team that for so long lacked the cash to invest finally found an owner with deep pockets… only to be limited by the wider financial constraints in F1.
However, for both teams the cost cap is a net positive. After years of Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes pouring cash in, the handbrake has been applied and gradually the rest can catch up. McLaren is now not so far off, and while it will still take Williams years to close that gap, it finally has a chance of doing so. For a team that was sliding backwards in that regard for 20 years, that’s changed the game.
McLaren is tantalisingly close to a major breakthrough. This season it is set to continue with an evolution of its ’23 car, which followed the design lead set by Red Bull. Realistically, McLaren could be Red Bull’s nearest challenger, having finished fourth last year. The technical understanding of the rules the team exhibited by improving its car through the year was beyond anything Mercedes, Ferrari or Aston Martin managed. While a championship bid isn’t impossible, it’s more realistic to expect a few wins with Norris and Piastri consistently on the podium. The 2026 new engine and chassis regulations are the obvious window of opportunity for McLaren to aspire to end its long title drought.
As for Williams, repeating last year’s seventh place would be enough to tick the progress box for now. Last year’s car was flattered by Alex Albon’s remarkable performances but there are fundamental weaknesses, notably the tendency to suffer with front brake locking and excessive aerodynamic sensitivity to changes in wind conditions, that need to be tackled even to repeat that result. But a gentle improvement will be enough while the important work goes on at the factory in strengthening the team’s technical capability. Longer term, even 2026 will come too soon for Williams, but it could realistically be a threat come the 2030s.
There is one crucial limitation for both – neither is a works team. Both use the Mercedes power unit, which by regulation must be to the same specification as that used by the factory squads. It’s a problem insofar as it means limited or no influence on the packaging, which can make a significant difference. While once being a customer team meant you would be double-digits down in terms of horsepower, and often more than that, that’s not the case today, but this integration opportunity can be worth crucial tenths each lap. Both will be courting potential manufacturers, but that’s a long-term battle and being customers does slightly limit their potential. For Williams, that’s way down the list of disadvantages, but it could become significant for McLaren in the coming years.
Five years ago, McLaren and Williams appeared to be going nowhere and potentially in terminal decline. That has now changed. There’s still much to do, but those who remember the days when F1 was McLaren and Williams can hope that their long slumbers will soon be over.
