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Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe has revealed that the team is not ready to give up on Force India who currently occupies fourth in the standings. Williams entered the year with the aim of regaining fourth place after losing out on a season long battle with Force India in 2016.
The two teams fought for fourth in the constructor standings, which Force India wrapped up. In 2017, Force India appear to have pulled even further ahead of Williams, as it is now 60 points ahead as Formula 1 heads into the summer break.
"I’ve said to the guys that Hungary is a good weekend to motivate us to make a quicker car," Lowe said. "I think that’s the best way to sum it up really. We’ve got a lot of work to do and we need to be better than that. And we can be better than that, so that’s what we’ll go away and do.
"We won’t give up on P4. I think we can be very strong at some other races this year, hopefully some of the ones coming up, and we’ll aim to get better at exploiting the performance with points which we’ve also not been great at doing in the first half. First half term report is ‘could do better’, could do a lot better. We’ll go back to the second half with that mentality of trying to do that."
"We’re not performing as we should at the what you would call the maximum downforce circuits,” he said. "Those are Monaco, Hungary and Singapore. But I’m never one to give up before I’ve got there. So we’ll see what we can do before Singapore."
Williams is also yet to confirm its driver line-up for 2017. Lance Stroll is expected to stay as long as he can keep the flow of money coming, but Felipe Massa's future is becoming increasingly uncertain as Lowe confirmed every option will be explored.
After his impressive return in Hungary, Paul di Resta could yet make it back full-time: "We consider every option," Lowe is quoted by Spain's El Confidencial. "I think he (di Resta) has a good reputation after this weekend, and I've heard he might also get a call from Mercedes. So that's the situation."
Fergal Walsh
Grand Prix of Belgium
G. Zhou
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Replies (9)
Login to replyF1racefan97
Posts: 113
Honestly force India are far too far away, the top 4 for the rest the season will probably stay static unless Ferrari improve hugely
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
That ship has already set sail. It has travelled the seven seas and has already returned to port, filled with silk and oriental spices.
mbmwe36
Posts: 533
LOL basically yes!
Williams are being let down by their drivers for sure, but the car seems to need quite a bit of work to be on par with FI. So there's really no quick fix.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
I think its more down to the car. Maybe their drivers arent the best F1 has to offer, but even then, they should be quite alot faster than they have been.
Barron
Posts: 625
I think the car is sh1te which begs the question: why did Pat Symonds 'retire' early and how come a so-called F1 engineering guru that was poached from McLaren by Mercedes has suddenly come available and is now at Williams? Answer, (IMO) Pat Symonds who is a bloody good engineer couldn't make it work at Williams maybe for budget reasons, and Paddy Lowe isn't that good.(Otherwise why did Merc let him go?) I take issue with the drivers comments though. Stroll, despite his youth is relatively accomplished and Massa, bless him, is a trier. I really don't think it's their fault that the team are not getting results. The car is sh1te.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
I agree on the car. It does definitely look slower than the rest. But I doubt its Lowe's fault. Besides, Lowe came so late to Williams that I doubt he could've influenced the car.
mbmwe36
Posts: 533
Di Resta came in from the street - literally - and was 7/10 of a second slower than Stroll. Having not really driven a hybrid F1 car, not to mention never even driven a mile in these supposedly incredibly demanding 2017 cars.
I've always been a fan of Massa's, and he's doing an okay job at this point, but overall, I would take FI's drivers over Williams' any day of the week.
k.gandhiin
Posts: 17
It is not that the SFI car is faster, but the whole team looks faster to me. So they actually winning as a package. Williams on the other side is faster with 'pitstop' and car, but the whole is not able to put a proper strategy plus the driver are motivated enough.
Look at Checo & Ocon, they both are racing each other and there is no team order given to them, even after being younger ocon didn't received any order from team in British GP when he was clearly slower than Checo. So SFI's character is to race, while Williams is just not able to put things right and right moments.
boudy
Posts: 1,168
Force india has a better driver lineup. The current williams lineup is not really good enough. Stroll should have had an year of Fp1's. Massa should have retired. Should have kepthold of bottas and brought in someone like hulkenberg/Perez. It's really their own fault that they are behind FI.