The mythical English institution has once again experienced a rather tumultuous winter, notably with the departure of former director Jost Capito and Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Demaison, formerly in the position of technical director.<\/p>\n
Sven Smeets, sports director, reflects on the preparation and development of the team during this eventful winter break.<\/p>\n
“It’s controlled chaos, as I call it,” said Smeets. “Of course, I mean that we have next week – we have a filming day so the car will have some track time and we will have another one in Bahrain before testing – that we will use, the car will of course run and as Dave [Robson, Vehicle Performance Chief] mentioned, we have conducted various tests on the components, the engine, and all of that.”<\/p>\n
So, I think we will be very well prepared for Bahrain and yes, I mean, it’s my second car built now, so I looked at it completely differently from my arrival last year a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
But we are just very busy. Everyone is fully dedicated, we want to have the race quantities [of parts] of course in Bahrain and it seemed a bit easier last year with the test in Barcelona, then a few weeks, then the test in Bahrain.<\/p>\n
Dave Robson focused on the changes to the FW45 compared to its predecessor. The most noticeable change, visually, will be in the sidepods.<\/p>\n
\u00ab It is philosophically an evolution; obviously, you will see, but of course the regulatory changes around the new floor dominate a part of it. \u00bb<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the other thing you will find most obvious is an update to the sidepod package, which is an evolution of what we did for the Silverstone upgrade package [2022], but we were a bit restricted then by the radiator layout and didn’t want to completely change that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The former strategy chief of Mercedes, James Vowles, will start his position as team director at Williams on February 20. This is a new challenge that the team is eager to begin, according to Robson.<\/p>\n
“I think it is very important for the team to have someone who finishes this journey now and gets us moving forward again,” said Robson.<\/p>\n
And we all knew that this wouldn’t be just a one-year journey, so I think James is very eager to get started, and he will be very determined to advance Williams in the long run. “It’s very exciting,” Smeets added.<\/p>\n
When he [Vowles] arrives in a few weeks, we will discover what he has planned. I think what he brings is obviously a wealth of experience from Mercedes and its incarnations before that.<\/p>\n
Before concluding: \u00ab He knows what it takes to be at the top and stay at the top. Personally, I think he is very ambitious, he is clearly very intelligent, so we are excited to have him participate and lead us for the rest of the journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Williams unveiled yesterday its 2023 livery at the team’s factory based in Groove. After finishing in last place four times in the last five seasons, the team hopes to have a more refined FW45 in their hands, awaiting the arrival of their new director James Vowles before the pre-season tests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":34199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[16,672,1707],"class_list":["post-4437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-16","tag-james-vowles","tag-williams"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n