‘Like flying the plane and rebuilding it’ – Why Williams’ ‘B-spec’ upgrade is a key test for their long-term future

In recent weeks a lot of focus has been placed on Aston Martin’s strategy of throwing everything at a single major upgrade package, which is due to be introduced at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Meanwhile, somewhat under the radar, Williams have also been developing significant changes to be delivered in one hit, in this case for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in September.

The difference is that, unlike Aston Martin, Williams has also been introducing small steps here and there, including a decent package in Miami and a new front wing that made its debut at Silverstone on Friday.

Before running the latter on track, Carlos Sainz admitted that he “didn’t expect miracles” and that it wouldn’t be “a game changer”. An initial look at the order after Silverstone Sprint Qualifying suggested that was the case, with the Spaniard and his team mate Alex Albon in P15 and P16.

However this was the first time since Monaco that both cars made it into the second session, and the team had also seemingly leapfrogged Haas. In other words progress was made, if only from P9 to P8 in the team pecking order.

“A small step, maybe a bit smaller than what we would have liked, to be honest,” said Sainz. “We put a new front wing on the car that seems to be working well. I think it has only helped us to outqualify Haas. From being behind to being in front of them with it, I think that's a fair little upgrade that we brought to it.”

It’s still far from where the team wants to be though. “Unfortunately, we're still miles away from the top 10,” Sainz added. “I think the VCARB and the Audi this weekend seem to be half a second quicker, which is a bit too much for our liking, but it is what it is. We will keep pushing, keep digging.”

The frustration for the drivers is that, after Silverstone, they still have five more races either side of the summer break before they can expect to make significant progress up the order in Azerbaijan. Until then they can only hope that opportunities come their way.

“On pure pace, we're going to have to wait till Baku,” Albon noted on Thursday. “It happened to Carlos unfortunately last weekend, but the general reliability is so poor this year that you just need to be within the mix of the midfield, which we've seen in some of the races earlier this year, to have a chance to score points.

“It's not like we're in standby mode until Baku, but we do rely on reliability issues to get into the points.”

Team Principal James Vowles confirmed that the Azerbaijan package will be significant, but he is also keen to stress that, unlike Aston, Williams hasn’t put all its eggs in one basket.

“The best way to describe it to you is it's a B-spec car,” he said. “It's a new chassis, and other bits that go with at the same time. That will be a large upgrade, that's true.

“What we did between Suzuka to Miami was a reasonably large upgrade. What we have this weekend is actually a reasonable upgrade as well at the same time. And then we have other weight reduction, which will be, in terms of performance, actually fairly significant. So it's not really, unlike Aston, based around that.

“If I'm correct, watch this weekend, and I think that would be an appraisal of where the car is, performance-wise. Let's take a review of where we are.”

Vowles also made clear that the Baku package isn’t just about the performance that it should bring to the track – introducing such major changes in the middle of a racing campaign will also be a litmus test for the changes to systems and processes back in Grove, which are a work-in-progress.

“In terms of our direction of travel, we have to – as a business – prove to ourselves that we can do the engineering to the right level of quality, and build a car to the right level of quality in-season – effectively the equivalency of flying the plane and rebuilding it at the same time.

“We have to prove to ourselves that we have changed from where we were three years ago, and have that capability. And we're on target to do it at the moment.”