Williams - Is Sam Michaels up to the task now?

There has been very little success since Sam Michaels took over but it wasn't that much better when Patrick Head was in charge. I mean they won a few races each year and threatened for championships (2003) but it has been a lean spell by their '80s and early 90s standards.

I think the main reason that Patrick Head was kicked upstairs was that his no-nonsense behavior rankled the BMW boffins. He and Mario were frequently at loggerheads with angry press comments. It was not a reflection of Patrick's performance by any means. I guess Frank and Patrick (both co-owners of Williams F1) thought that a change at the top might help bring in fresh ideas and rejuvenate the team. Has this happened? No.

Patrick Head is more of an mechanical engineering guru than an aero one. I think his best days were when he was paired with an aerodynamist like Adrian Newey. I remember reading an article in F1 Racing about a year back where Peter Windsor mentioned that he felt that Patrick should jump back into active duty as his presence and leadership was sorely missed.

The sad thing is that F1 is become more of a crap shoot over the last few years. You can have the best driver in the world, the best strategist, one of the best engineman, perhaps the best engineering head and still not win the championship - Ferrari. It was a fine car whose poor tires and complacency in the beginning of the season that blotted their 2005 copybook. You need just one factor to go wrong to kill your championship hopes in a jiffy.

Therefore it is not easy to judge the performance of a technical head these days.

 

It seems to me like Williams has had problems maintaining development over the season. And that's usually a money issue. You can also trace their down turn back to when they lost Adrian Newey to McLaren, a guy both teams now seem to miss sorely! But really, I'm afraid that Williams is currently teetering on the edge of slipping further down the ladder and becoming a midfield caliber team. It will be extremely difficult for them to pull out of a hole like that regardless of who manages the team, and one only hopes they don't go the way of Jordan. That's obviously an extreme example, but a long term possibility.