Where Now For The Williams Revival?

Williams leaped to near the front of the field the last time F1’s regulations changed in 2014, but has slowly slipped back since then. The team needs to repeat the trick

- Ben Anderson

Williams is a grand old powerhouse of Formula 1, a team that’s been an integral part of elite single-seater racing for the best part of four decades, a participant for even longer, yet its best days seem well and truly consigned to history.

The track record speaks for itself. The current incarnation of Williams as an F1 constructor (discounting its 1977 season as a March customer team, and the prior squad Sir Frank sold to Walter Wolf) is the third most experienced on the grid.

There have been 659 F1 races held during Williams’s life, of which it has won 114, finished on the podium in 311 and started on pole for 128. Only Ferrari and McLaren can boast better records. Williams’s haul of nine constructors’ titles, augmented by seven world championships for drivers, is bettered only by Ferrari – the grandest of grande-epreuve equipes.

History can buy a reputation, an army of loyal fans, but it won’t buy success. The first 20 seasons for Williams in its current guise in F1 were phenomenal; the last 19 nowhere close to those heady early heights. The statistical contrast between the pre-1998 Williams and the post-’97 one is stark.

There once was a time when Williams could do no wrong in F1. At its best it was capable of winning one in every three grands prix it contested. Now, it’s lucky if it can win once in every 30. That this team has failed to win a championship for the best part of 20 years (a pain McLaren also knows all too well), and hasn’t even been able to outscore its historical self, despite more races being held and points awarded than ever in the modern era, highlights how far this once mighty team has fallen.