With nine constructors’ titles and seven Williams drivers, it is the second most important team in the category since the cold numbers. Neither the Mercedes cape with Hamilton or the title tandem between Vettel and Verstappen have been able to overcome the predominance of the former British team in the Formula One.
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Thus, that same tame car that today trots without ambition through the season’s tracks carrying one of the most distinguished logos of a division on its trunk, seems destined to have as a strategy to prevent the leaders from taking laps from it. Unattainable seem the days of Mansell, Prost y Villenueve and their monarchies or the courage they showed in the asphalt river (without titles, but with points) Montoya o Ralph Schumacher.
As we will remember in 2020 the team was acquired by Dorilton Capital, an American investment fund, for more than 150 million euros. At the time, the action was classified as a safeguard for a team that did not measure up and budgetary demands suffocated them.
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The operation also had a condition: the team would keep the name until 2025 on the path set to return to the leading places on the grid. Today, starting in 2023, the original plan looks further away as we see that the only capital that the team had, the name, withers every Sunday.
At the start of the season, the team made an important decision: let go of Jost Understood, team manager who arrived at the beginning of the project with the intention of refounding the team. Capito left and among all that he said, what became clear was that the investors had taken on a project that was getting out of hand. “What we are doing now is like operating on an open heart while the patient runs a marathon”was the most painful phrase he used to explain the complicated panorama he faced and why he was taking a step aside.
Today, in an effort to improve, the team has been studying the possibility of changing the engine, leaving Mercedes aside to bet on Honda. The problem is that when leaving the German propellers they also leave the gearboxes, so the choice by the Japanese would force them to have to manufacture them themselves. A challenge no less an already chaotic scenario. Meanwhile, Williams’ legacy will continue to fall in a macabre countdown to 2025. A glory that today is miles from what it was.
