+2 With the improvement they have shown thus far in 2007, I wouldn't rule out BMW in the next few years.
LOL He still has a chance to sell his shop to Toyota. Especially as long as his own cars beat the factory cars. BTW: The BMW brochure I referred to has a nice little stab at Frank. It is something along the lines "whenever we went to visit their factory, all we would get was a few dusty cookies as a welcome". I laughed out loud, particularly since the rest of the glossy magazine is all business and bottomed down shirt.
For all the jibes and criticisms of Frank Williams, I really respect the Williams team. Nowadays the grid seems to be filled with the corporate types. I think Frank and Patrick Head are throwbacks to the days of pure racers. They may seem like an anachronism right now but come the day that Williams sells out to a manufacturer and those guys disappear, we will miss them.
The FW07 was my first love in F1 and I was a Williams fan long before I switched to the Ferrari group. However over the years I have lost some of my adoration for Patrick and Frank: They both have become somewhat of dinosaurs and didn't develop. Here the list of mistakes as I see them: - missed the boat on selling out to a car manufacturer - screwed the pooch with BMW - weak aero development - weak team development - lousy treatment of their drivers, just think about all the champions they lost So what was once a young and dynamic team has become a bit of a Gulag under these two dictators. Of course Frank's accident made things worse.
I could not have said it myself. Not only did they lose the drivers, what about Adrian Newey? Geoff Willis? Gavin Fisher?
Agree. Still remember A Jones harassing Reutemann at Long Beach '78. To me that race established that Williams would one day be a force, and sure enough 2 years later they were champs. On another note, back in the 60s & 70s the overwhelming majority of the field ran Cosworth DFVs' yet nobody griped about F1 being a spec series back then....
Paul, even with the Cosworths there was enough innovation to make it interesting, from the fan car, to sliding skirts, etc. The Cosworth with the exception of the Ferrari Flat 12 remained the Engine to beat for almost a decade and half. Ferrari had the measure of the Cosworth runners from 75 through 79, unfortunately the Flat 12 was not conducive to the true sliding skirt aero cars that Williams and Brahbam had perfected by the late 70's early 80's.
Don't forget the 6-wheel Tyrell, and that funky arrows F1 car where patrese was practically lying down. Can't find a picture of it..... Don't forget the Matra/Alfa 12s either. These were cars that were designed with little wind tunnel input;today if all the cars where painted the same you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between them; I imagine they all sound the same also....I'll see/hear for myself at the USGP.....
Instead, it emerges that the two extra mirrors - mounted on the top of the MP4-22's sidepods - were designed to give 22-year-old Hamilton an easy glimpse of engine smoke. from F1-live.com
THANKS DAN! That's one crazy looking F1 car but if memory serves me it really wasn't competitive. Love looking at the mid 70 to early 80s F1 cars... I'll have to remember that site. Anyone have a picture of the 1977 Wolf GP car? That car won on its debut.
Indeed it wasn't. I watched Patrese race in it at the 1979 German GP in Hockenheim. One ugly hell of a car.
That it is, but at least it was original compared to the cookie cutter cars of today. I forgot that Warsteiner was the sponser
I read in a recent interview, that the latest craze in F1 is to now have 2 wind tunnels. Former midfield Sauber team increased its headcount to 480 (formerly below 300) and is now running its windtunnel 24x7 (used to be only 33% of the overall time) alongside its new Albert 2 supercomputer for CFD analysis. And guess what happened? Now they're chasing after the top 3.
Seems so long ago when Forghieri designed the entire car-including the innovative "T" transmission-312T by himself. Now we have 25 people studying the aeros on the mirrors......
Good point. One of my most precious posessions is a little drawing of a F1 car Forghieri once did for me when we met. <sigh>
