Formula 1 2012 Preview: Williams and Caterham

The 2012 Formula One seasons starts in Melbourne, Australia. This time next week Friday free practice will have already have been completed.

How are the teams looking ahead of the new season? Here we look at two teams that will hope to be involved in the midfield scrap.

Williams

It’s very difficult to assess Williams. The team was on an upward curve for a few years until it fell back to ninth in the standings last year.

Like Sauber, the fear is that they just don’t know what they are doing wrong. The dominant force of the 1990s has been decimated, and many a Formula 1 fan is sad to see Williams in their current position.
The loss of BMW at the end of 2005 was the key moment in the team’s recent history. Their real error was not necessarily losing BMW but their inability to replace them.

Just as the world economy floundered, the team needed to find millions of dollars to pay for engines. This double blow set the team back hugely as R&D cash was diverted to pay for engines.

A significant refreshing of the technical staff means 2012 is likely to be a building year. Mike Coughlan has plenty of experience and the same has to be said of Williams too, so there is hope.

The car looked inconsistent in the final test at Barcelona. Bruno Senna made plenty of errors, missing apexes and struggling with traction. Each corner was broken into three of four sectors, rather than being one smooth and flowing process.

Pastor Maldonado appeared to lack confidence in the car. It looks like more work is needed, but there is no reason why the once-great team can’t get ahead of Toro Rosso and Sauber as the year progresses.

It’s not immediately clear how good the drivers are. Letting Rubens Barrichello go was a good move. He was the equal of Maldonado last year, so it was right to sign Bruno Senna in the hope that the young Brazilian may be a star of the future. The two drivers were both very good in GP2, Formula 1’s feeder series. That they both bring cash to the team is merely an added bonus. Whether either of them proves to be as good as Nico Hülkenberg, the young German Williams were forced to relinquish at the end of 2010 for budgetary reasons, remains to be seen.

Caterham

Entering their third Formula 1 season, Caterham needs to start pushing the established teams. A strong technical staff and a Red Bull rear end suggest the car should be very good, especially at the beginning of the year when other teams are sorting their new packages. The CT01 should certainly be reliable.

The team is relocating to the ex-Arrows facility in Leafield during the year. They hope this can be completed during the August factory shutdown, which should limit any disruption. The benefit is that the team will be closer to Red Bull Racing and the Williams wind tunnel.

But what about on track? At the final F1 test in Barcelona the car looked cumbersome. It wasn’t responsive and lacked the dart-like direction changes of all the other cars. Barcelona’s fast turns Nos. 7-8 particularly highlighted the car;s lack of speed, with the drivers dropping a couple of gears and coming right off the throttle. This compares to the Mercedes, for example, which dropped a gear and was back on the throttle almost before drivers Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher had lifted their foot.

The fact Caterham were at the test at all is testament to the team and is a marked contrast to their fellow "new team" partners HRT and Marussia, who did no preseason testing with their 2012 cars at all, save for HRT’s filming day.

Another plus for Caterham is their driver lineup. Heikki Kovalainen is highly regarded and is a very capable grand prix driver. He has a wealth of experience from working with teams such as Renault (now Lotus) and McLaren. He rightly made it into Autocourse’s highly-regarded top 10 last year. To do that in the car he was driving was very impressive.

Vitaly Petrov fills the second seat, and while he may be paying for the privilege, the team made the right decision to drop the ageing Jarno Trulli. There comes a point in sport when a competitor has to recognise that his time is over. The Italian was strongly regarded as a qualifying specialist who couldn’t quite get the job done in races, apart from his sublime 2004 Monaco grand prix performance. Last year he was outqualified by Kovalainen 17-2.