Williams Have Been Too Cautious for Their Own Good Across 2014 Formula 1 Season
For a team with 114 grand prix victories, nine constructors' championships and seven drivers' titles to their name, Williams have been spooked by success for much of this season.
Their car has more often than not sat second behind the Mercedes W05 as the fastest on the Formula One grid throughout the year but has never quite realised its true potential.
While the Red Bull RB10—a car that couldn't even make it to the end of the pit lane on the penultimate day of pre-season testing—will end this season with at least three wins under its belt, Williams' FW36 will coast into parc ferme for the final time at next weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix having achieved a minimum of one pole position and seven podium finishes.
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A credible record, of course—but not exactly Williams', is it?
This, apparently, is just the start, the prelude to bigger and better things in the coming years. The poles, podiums and, indeed, the wins that may have slipped through the net today will be claimed with panache tomorrow.
The FW36 is just a stepping stone toward the FW37 and FW38, with which the team will, presumably, hope to claim their first world title of any kind since 1997.
Rob Smedley, the team's head of vehicle performance, spoke of the need to rediscover the art of winning in the aftermath of June's Austrian Grand Prix—where Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, unaided by a conservative strategy, dropped from first and second on the grid to fourth and third, respectively, by the chequered flag—telling Autosport's Ben Anderson:
"I think we have to look inwardly at ourselves and understand how we improve in every single tiny detail, because it's in the details, there's no big magic bullet.
We were racing against a very professional outfit (Mercedes) with a quicker car, but very well organised. And why are they so well organised? Because they've got such a depth of experience racing at that end of the field.
We have to learn.
"
Although Williams' willingness to take it slow and steady in their resurgence is admirable—the lowly Lotus team are this year suffering the consequences of trying and failing to chase the sun in 2012 and 2013—the vast resources of Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren-Honda suggest that the Grove-based outfit's spell as a leading outfit could be short-lived, and any chance to win instantly must be utilised.
There is a fine line between caution and a lack of ambition, which Williams, it seems, are struggling to find at the moment and was best highlighted in the immediate aftermath of qualifying for last weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix.
Smedley—having been asked whether Massa missing out on pole by 0.2 seconds (as per Formula1.com) counted as a "missed opportunity" for the team—was quoted by Sky Sports' William Esler as saying he was, "quite tired of hearing about missed opportunities." He then declared that he was, "happy with third and fourth" on the grid, citing Williams' rise from 2013, when they scored only five points all season.
Such an outlook—relying on the team's previously uncompetitive spell as a marker to judge their vastly different current form and praising an under-par performance as a good result—is counter-productive, leaving all at Williams looking over their shoulders at their more established rivals, as well as looking at what they were 12 months ago instead of what they could go on to become.
Their restlessness as a front-running outfit, perhaps as a result of that philosophy, has been evident across each of the last three race weekends.
Bottas—as he did in Austria—made a mistake in the dying moments of qualifying and allowed pole position to slip from his grasp in Russia, while a slow pit stop for Massa at the Circuit of the Americas saw Williams somehow miss out on a podium finish to Daniel Ricciardo despite the team locking out the second row of the grid.
And at Interlagos on Sunday, the Brazilian tried his utmost to give third place away—picking up a penalty for speeding in the pit lane before making the mistake of stopping momentarily in McLaren's pit box for his final stop of the afternoon—with the sheer pace of his car rescuing Massa from embarrassment in front of his home crowd.
The blips that have slightly marred Williams' form over the last month would suggest that—despite adding a total of 53 points to their season's tally between Russia and Brazil—the team's progress in re-emerging as a ruthless force has slowed.
Yet, we should not be surprised given that success is habitual.
It is why Red Bull, the constructors' champions for four of the last five seasons, are the only team other than Mercedes to take a grand prix victory this season, and why Williams—with just one race win in a decade—have constantly been kept at arm's length.
The only way to return the winning feeling is to do exactly that, but Williams, the reluctant stars of the season, have talked their way out of it on more than one occasion.
You can only hope that they don't come to regret it at a later date.
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