Formula One – Williams’ Fortunes Due to Change
At one time Williams F1 was the greatest team in the sport and had many great champions including Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Jenson Button. They have won nine constructors championships and at one time they were the most innovative team in F1, bringing many new inventions into the sport.
But those days are now long gone. This private team, until recently owned exclusively by its founders Sir Frank Williams and Patrick Head, has been starved of the huge sums of money that nowadays is necessary to remain at the forefront of the sport. As a result many compromises have had to be made, including recently using Cosworth engines. The team has fallen well behind and to date has scored only 4 points this season.
In the past Cosworth made great engines for racing cars, but they are a small company and their engineering capabilities have fallen behind those of the top engine manufacturers such as Renault, Ferrari, McLaren and the rest. However in an announcement made today, Williams will dump Cosworth at the end of this season and have signed an agreement to source their engines for 2012 from Renault.
This means that next season Williams will have the same engines as Red Bull, and that should make a huge difference to their performance.
That is not the only major change for next year. The technical director Sam Michael along with Jon Tomlinson the head of aerodynamics will be leaving the company and have been replaced by Mark Gillan and Jason Somerville.
These are huge changes and should enable a complete turnaround of Williams’ fortunes. Look out for some early odds on next year’s constructor’s title. We are not saying that Williams will win, but they could be up there with the big boys and could certainly be challenging Mercedes.
This weekend is the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, so if you want to support the British drivers you can get odds of 11 to 2 from William Hill that Lewis Hamilton will get the fastest lap and 12 to 1 from SportingBet that Jenson Button will win the race.
Place your bet now with William Hill
