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Well, duh!

I don't know if anyone else has had this thought or not, but could Sainz issues especially with trackside calls and reliability be a consequence of the underperforming previous drivers? Could we be seeing the lack of experience of our team now having two known quality drivers demanding the highest support, when in the past there have been times where the second driver has delivered poor results yet Russell and then Albon have put the car where it didn't belong?

Is there a lack of experience in the other garage in Williams that simply hasn't been expected or had to fight at their peak performance?

I don't want to suggest that Williams have free loaders who haven't done anything for years, but more that there's been less pressure to perform with Latiffi and Sergeant? Is Sainz side of the garage simply struggling now that there's more expectation on them?

Or am I mulling over something that simply isn't there?

Geez the summer break brings out the weird thoughts in my brain. Lol

Hopefully, this summer break helps everyone in the team to regroup and make necessary changes to have some good results in the remainder of the season. I would love to see a podium finish this season.

Quote:

Karson
Hopefully, this summer break helps everyone in the team to regroup and make necessary changes to have some good results in the remainder of the season. I would love to see a podium finish this season.

Can you make changes? As far as I'm aware it a total factory shut down. After the last race you get everything back to the factory then it shuts. Then reopens again the week before the next race. I don't think anything can change unless I've drunk too much prosecco

In the vowles verdict video he was asked this. HR and IT carry on. IT to do maintenance. Team principals would use this time to sort out driver contracts. I guess these aren't technically part of "the factory" and counts as housekeeping. They would also do commercial stuff, together with marketing to please sponsors.

So "housekeeping" sainz' side of the garage would be OK I think.

I'm not sure I see it that way though in terms of us being a one car team from the garage. I don't think strategy or reliability has been more an issue on one side than the other. The brake issue in Austria was self inflicted by Carlos, though sure, they could have radioed him to tell him to take it easier. Not sure why they didn't. Maybe laps to the grid aren't monitored?Albon was the one with a straight up mechanical issue. There has been some smart "team" strategy eg Hungary splitting middle stint strategy to hedge our bets, Saudi with DRS, monaco by slowing everyone up in synch, which the team never had the option to do before and it worked very well thinking like a two car team which both sides played their part well in.

Both sides of the garage equally find it a lottery switching on these softs.

I'm not sure what that's all about to be honest. Could it be that the car wasn't designed to deal with super softs, has a narrow set up window and cannot be set up in a way that allows for both hards and softs to run well?

I have a working hypothesis which is a bit different: albon caught the dreaded "can't get the softs to work" -itis, when colapinto started delivering last year. For years he was very consistent. This year again, before carlos was up to speed, albon was very consistent in qualifying. Then as carlos caught up, both now seem to take it in turns catching this disease at the point of the weekend when you need absolute confidence in your car, and yourself. Could it be a case that one drivers' execution suffers when the other driver delivers because of sinking confidence, and vice versa? This is a working theory that some drivers with confidence issues can only deliver if they already think they are ahead that weekend and are feeling good. At haas with grosjean and magnussen, you never had both drivers delivering at the same time, they took it in turns to dominate or disappear, so you ended up with a one car team even though both sides were capable of delivering.

Sainz has been immune to this phenomenon in his career so far, but a drop to a lesser performing team threatening his top driver status, a slow start, a run of bad luck, surprise at albons pace and a horrible score sheet may well have led him to contract this disease which albon, a fast but fragile driver with a terrible previous record against a top driver, suffers bouts of when challenged, himself. Soft tyre execution was never a thing for years at williams when albon was dominating struggling drivers. Now, both sides of the garage can't seem to get on top of it, as if race engineers have unlearned how to do their jobs. It doesn't make sense to me looking at carlos' (or indeed albons) race engineers.

I see sainz' side of the garage as equally capable of delivering. Forget the points. Both sides delivered P6/P6 in qualifying and the race in Belgium for example. Sainz has outqualified Albon a lot this year, but equally been the victim of traffic, damage, safety car circumstances making his tyres the wrong ones etc which has cost him a lot of points and which the garage could have done nothing about. The real challenge is how rare it is to see both williams drivers execute at their best on a Saturday and get both cars into Q3. (or indeed out of Q1).

I think it's smart for vowles to take the focus and pressure off the drivers and make them feel looked after and comfortable and of course they should do everything they can do tighten up what they can. There is scope for improvement on strategy and pitstops. However, some things are down to the driver to fix.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2025:08:11:03:15:03 by crusty_bread.

Sainz on his Williams move so far:


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