Behind the carefully-crafted lines of press releases, the glamorous photo-shoots published on social media, and even the black-and-white facts of race results each weekend, lies the only way to learn the true nature, ethos, and authenticity of a team: meeting their people.
Having visited the Williams headquarters, toured the site, and met many of their staff both in informal conversations and sit-down interviews, we found one thing that stood out above all.
Mission. Vision. Ambition. Drive, if you’d excuse the pun.
Call it what you will, but it was undeniable that the air was thick with purpose. The whole team, in every part of the site and department, were intensely motivated which was clear from their work and how they spoke to us.
Williams wants to win. This is a non-negotiable aim for them. It is also an aim that they are not shy to talk about. In fact, everyone seemed incredibly keen to repeat this to us. With the mentality that winning was the end goal, improvement was expected, excellence was sought, and this was the foundation for all their work.
This goal is an end in and of itself, and the team is adamant not to complicate this ambition with specific timetables or criteria in how and when they would get there, or what needs to be changed. Not publicly, at least.
When we arrived, we were brought to the Experience Centre, a very well decked-out building with one of Valtteri Bottas’ cars in the entrance way. We were momentarily very confused after being informed that we were to meet our hosts in Singapore, until we saw a sign on the wall telling us that Singapore was upstairs; each room in that building was named after a race on the calendar.
Singapore itself was a well-lit, spacious room with a large conference table down one side, and a smaller, round table on the other. We didn’t stay long, however, as we were soon off on the factory tour, led by Senior Experience Center Manager Tom Iverson.
The first highlight was the liquid nylon laser printing room, with six machines, each very tall with a pool of liquid nylon being combed over at intervals to shape it millimetre by millimetre, with (literally) laser precision into the part it would become, and emitting loud, slightly unnerving, almost otherworldly noises. Whether this was a necessary feature, crucial to the working of these cutting-edge machines, or simply a fun addition designed to create a cool atmosphere and impress/intimidate the visiting journalists was unclear.
At any rate, this was where the impressive scale of the operation became apparent: to manufacture each part to the required level of precision took a machine at minimum 24 hours, and in some cases up to 63.
One key job of these machines was to produce scale-model cars for use in wind-tunnel testing. Since this time is strictly limited and monitored by the FIA (motor racing’s governing body), if a model wasn’t exactly, unquestionably correct, then the data from that testing session would be useless, and enormously valuable time would have been squandered.
The pressure in a Formula 1 team is extraordinary, and relentless.
Next, we moved into an enormous room, the full height of the facility, which was deafening. This was a full-on factory floor. Markings on the ground guided you on the designated routes between machines and working areas, arranged like islands across the space, each producing a distinctive, but equally thundering noise. We paused at a few to ask the people manning them what each did – this was where the car was made, with different machines for metallic and non-metallic parts.
One particular feature of interest was the focus on recycling – several machines had buckets under to catch the tiny shards of metal not used in the process so that they could be reused. In the cost-cap era, we were told, it was imperative to reduce waste to an absolute minimum so that money could be spent in the most efficient way possible. We thought it was definitely a sign, once again, of a team intensely focused on maximising its fortunes, right down to the finest of margins.
Along one of the long walls of the room, banners were draped virtually from floor to ceiling, which made it possible to see from pretty much every point on the factory floor. Each had a slogan on, beginning with “Williams is”, followed by, in turn along the wall, “innovation”, “resilience”, “teamwork”, “excellence”, and “accountability”.
The team’s ethos, so explicit, so loudly proclaimed, so drilled into their employees even in the workspace itself, was fascinating. It seemed that Williams is a team that values its principles greatly, and believes them to be not just descriptive, but prescriptive – that all employees should consciously and constantly hold their work to these metrics.
This was also evident later on in the tour – the computers had screensavers with various quotes on, one frequent one being “teamwork is collaboration with purpose”. In virtually every room there were whiteboards with performance targets on. It was difficult to escape the infectious ambition of the team, as we’re sure was the design.
One interesting point that was raised during the tour was the close relationship between on-track action and the working patterns in the factory. Every crash, spin or otherwise broken part that happens during track sessions results in a team at the factory having to work longer and harder to replace it, naturally at the expense of their work improving the performance of the car and designing upgrades. Though this may seem obvious, it really brought home to us how different watching the race must be for the team’s employees, and how close a relationship they have to every second of what goes on during a race weekend.
Next up was the Williams Heritage Centre. The museum itself was a wonderful space, with an active workshop at one end refurbishing cars that will be used in heritage races (it can take 18 months to make one of their cars race-worthy), and the rest of the area dedicated to a display of their cars from previous F1 seasons, arranged along a winding path in chronological order.
Wandering along the route, naturally the increasing size of the cars stood out, but also how proud the team was of each and every single car, regardless of that season’s results. Their championship cars were not given any particular pride of place; their less-successful cars were not hidden away at all.
Seeing cars driven by the Williams legends of old: Mansell, Prost, Piquet, Hill, Villeneuve, Rosberg, Jones, and Senna – was amazing, and the history was very close – the distance between Williams’ heyday in the 90s and the present day no longer seemed such a gulf.
The experiments and oddities stuck out too, of course. The six-wheeled car is iconic and distinctive, but what was most jarring was a period in the late 90s when (for sponsorship reasons) the Williams cars briefly turned red.
From there, we were then taken to the Esports Centre, an area that we were told Williams is now focusing on improving more. There was a large scalextric set, with a leaderboard of fastest laps ever, with a top five of:
- George Russell
- Jamie Chadwick
- Nicholas Latifi
- Nicolas Hamilton
- Claire Williams
These results provided an interesting indication as to the relationship between racing ability and model racing ability.
We were shown the sim racing setup, with no less than ten rigs set up across the centre of the room, complete with reclined chairs, pedals, and headsets.
Guided by one of Williams’ Events Technician Jack Noller, we were told how the controls worked.
On the easiest settings possible, we set off around Austria’s Red Bull Ring. Despite every possible assistance being turned on, we both managed to crash an embarrassing number of times in the space of a couple of laps. Nonetheless, our guide, buoyed up by Thomas’ achievement of one single clean lap, then gave us the challenge of Monaco, with a full 20 cars. Predictably, this did not go well.
We were so slow and crash prone that we didn’t finish the five lap race before we needed to move on. An unfortunate and premature end to our sim racing careers…
After our Esports exploits, we went back to Singapore, where we met and interviewed Williams Chief Operating Officer Frederic Brousseau. When asked about how Williams are evaluating their progress, he told us:
“We have a five-year strategic plan, obviously we’re trying to stick to it as much as possible. Although we are still a bit flexible in the progress, because this place is like an onion – we build one layer, and we find something else… We keep building still, and we keep finding stuff that we need to fix. So, we have to keep some level of flexibility, but we measure ourselves in terms of a five-year plan, three-year plan, one-year plan, and, okay, if we want to go there, what’s the first step we need to do this year, and how are we doing on that step?”
He then explained that the plans weren’t as simple as saying “we’re going to get a podium by x time.” He said:
“There’s a lot of things we don’t control, so we’ve got to measure ourselves on things we control. We don’t control the other teams. So saying we’re going to have a podium by ‘x’, what does it say? We don’t know what the others are doing, so we cannot commit to that. What’s important is that we make commitments we know we can hit.
“Ultimately, it’s about winning. But to win, we have to bring this business somewhere else. And then, we’re gradually going to start to have more points, podium finishes, the results are going to come. I think the results are the outcome that will come from all the other targets we’re going to hit internally.
“This is not in the short term how we should measure ourselves or target ourselves.
“When we think about our vision, our vision is clearly to win multiple world championships, but there’s no timeline to it because we still need to define the transformation to get there.”
We asked him how the team manages when they have a setback, such as a bad race. He told us:
“We always find a positive element. There’s always something positive, so we always have to go back. James [Vowles] is really good at it – after every session on the track, he sends an email to everyone in the organisation, and he’s been doing that for 18 months now. Through those emails, he always finds positive elements – What did we learn? What are we going to action from this? Simple stuff, but always ‘how do we look forward to this’ as opposed to what went wrong, what we didn’t deliver on time, what we missed, what design was not correct, what data was not appropriate. So I think it’s focusing on the positive.”
We asked if it was the honesty and openness of the team that helped, to which he replied:
“Yeah, it really helps, the two-way communication… People are starting to open up more and more: bring issues, ask questions.”
We then remained in Singapore for lunch, and then were taken to the simulator, where we got to see the simulator in action, with Harrison Scott driving around the Silverstone track and delivering feedback to the engineers.
The simulator was a surprisingly large, entire-front-of-the-car model that the driver sat in, in front of an enormous floor-to-ceiling screen that gave him an effective 180° field of view to simulate track conditions as closely as possible. What stood out most, however, was its forceful, seemingly violent movements. Mounted on rails, the mock-car mimicked the forces experienced through the fast turns, flinging the driver left and right like some sort of enormous mechanical shark grappling with its prey, with an aggressiveness that is almost scary just to watch (and indeed hear, with the regular metallic thumping sounds it creates), and yet is scarcely perceptible on the TV broadcasts. It definitely gave us an even greater appreciation of the sheer physicality of the sport – it must take an extraordinary standard of toughness simply to stay in the car without breaking multiple bones, let alone drive it.
We spoke to Performance Engineer Balraj Basra, who explained how the simulator worked, and what they used it for.
“A lot of driver immersion and driver coaching goes on in here.
“We use it quite regularly with our simulator drivers. Slightly younger academy guys, they’ll be in here and they’ll practise some of their stuff ahead of the weekend, just getting them used to F1 procedures before they take that step up.
“From an engineering perspective, all the data you get off here translates what we see at the track as well… What you’re trying to do is make this just an extension of the track.”
He explained that they used the simulator on Friday nights after practice sessions, and also used them after Sprint races, of which there are six this year.
“You’ve got six opportunities in the year where this can have a real impact.”
We then spoke to James Urwin, Alex Albon’s race engineer. He explained that his job was to, essentially, “operate the car at the track with the fewest mistakes possible.”
Of course, it isn’t as simple as that. He explained he was responsible for the setup of the car, down to the choice of springs and bars. He is also responsible for working out the run plans, and navigating different departments wanting to dest different components on the car.
“You manage the car with the driver, and the group of mechanics and engineers that work on the car.”
He is also responsible for communicating with the driver when they’re on track.
“You’re the one that talks to him, you’re the one that has to interpret what he describes as to what he wants, and have a relationship whereby there’s a lot of trust involved.
“If you get it wrong you could make the car bottom out on the ground and fire him off into the barrier in the worst case.
“It’s having an understanding of what the driver wants and what you see in the data… and then it’s a bit of unqualified psychology of managing tempers and all that sort of thing.”
We asked him about how he manages the stress of a race weekend, and he replied: “I think it takes a certain type of person to be able to do it.
“There must be… let’s call it 20 radio channels on the panel… While everything is going on, you’ve got four different conversations going off in your headset at the same time, while you’re trying to talk to the driver, and you’ll have four different conversations with people who are talking to you.
“It’s picking out the bits while multiple people are talking to you, then relaying it or not relaying it to the driver that takes a bit of skill, I think.
“It’s just how well you can deal with all the curveballs that come in.”
Overall, it’s clear that at the heart of Williams, there’s a firm focus on progress and a fantastic determination to return to the top step of Formula 1 once more. A team with a rich history, a promising present, and an even brighter future.
We would like to thank Ella Wilton, Tom Iverson, Jack Noller, Frederic Brousseau, Balraj Basra, James Urwin, and everybody at Williams Racing for making our visit possible, and for such a fantastic experience.