Dave Robson, Williams’s head of vehicle dynamics, welcomed the “nice surprise” of being the second most improved car on the Formula 1 grid this year.
In 2022, the Williams F1 team hit the bottom of the constructors’ championship standings with only eight points. Therefore, the team downplayed any hope at the pre-season test in Bahrain. It had little expectation of improving on the grid, especially after uncertainties that the team endured last winter.
During the Bahrain Grand Prix, Alex Albon, the lead driver of the team, secured a point after advancing to Q2. Although neither he nor his rookie teammate, Logan Sargeant, were able to progress beyond Q1 in Saudi Arabia. However, Albon came extremely close to qualifying for Q2, missing the cutoff by just a tenth of a second.
Williams still remains favorite to finish last in 2023. However, promising pace at the Bahrain GP provides encouragement for the team to be better this year. It is particularly noteworthy that the team has been without a technical director or head of aerodynamics since December. FX Demaison and David Wheater had left the team last year.
“Yeah, we came out of the test thinking we were better than we were last year. But maybe still as pretty much one of the slower cars,” Robson said.
“Bahrain was generally a bit of a surprise. [Jeddah], thinking that the circuit here would suit us a bit more, it’s probably slightly less of a surprise.
“But it’s still early days. People seem quite up and down as far as I can see, session by session and even in qualifying, it looked like team-mates in the same car were quite up and down, so it’s probably still a bit early by the moment.
“It’s all going well, it was a nice surprise in Bahrain and long may it continue.”
Robson added that Williams had remained focused to make its car more reliable. The approach paid back with significant gains compared to it FW44.
“We’ve made good progress because we knew when the last year’s car came out, it had some particular weaknesses,” Robson said.
“Throughout last year and into this year we’ve worked on those. And I think they probably yielded a reasonable step up in performance.
“We did see quite a lot of it on FW44. It was obviously quite poor at the start of the year and it did get better.
“I think we managed to take another step at the start of this year. That said, of course, we’ve only been to two circuits, so I’m sure there’ll be others where that improvement is less evident.”
