F1 News
Date:
23/August/2013
Pat Symonds, who spent much of the 1990s battling against
Williams, is now the man chosen to help revive the teams flagging F1 fortunes.
Williams appointed Symonds as its Chief Technical Officer once
the FIA ‘ban’ imposed on the Englishman as a result of Nelson Piquet Jr’s
deliberate accident in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix had expired.
That incident was the low point of Symonds’ otherwise
illustrious engineering career, resulting in him leaving the Renault F1 team,
with which he had enjoyed World Championship success with Michael Schumacher
and Fernando Alonso.
“Williams does have that incredible heritage and it’s a
heritage I respect a lot,” said Symonds of his new team. “But we can’t live in
the past. They were great times, of course they were, but my job now is to make
the team today as successful as it was then. It’s quite a challenge but it’s a
very enjoyable challenge.”
The task ahead is considerable. Although Williams won a race
last season, it was very much a flash in the pan. The team’s last Drivers’
title was with Jacques Villeneuve in 1997 and Pastor Maldonado’s shock Spanish
win is the only Williams podium since 2008.
“The fundamentals of the team are there,” said Symonds. “It’s
a very well equipped team, it has some very good people in it. An analogy I
often use is it’s like being the conductor of an orchestra.
“I think we have some very good instrumentalists in our
orchestra. And now we just really need to get them timed together, playing the
same tune and bring the success back.
“I think what we need to do at Williams is to look at
process and that’s really where my focus will be.”
Symonds also believes that the new 2014 technical rules will
make all teams re-examine their established ‘processes’.
“It is huge,” Symonds said of the impact of the regulation
changes. “When we have reasonably stable regulations you iterate to those
priorities. You also iterate to similar processes.
“Now when the rule book is ripped up and you start again,
you really have to think about what processes are important - what’s going to
bring you performance.
“And of course while everyone is focused on the powertrain
and there are a lot of things to do there - cooling’s a huge challenger, energy
management is a huge challenge - but of course we must not forget that it’s a
reasonably significant aerodynamic change we’re making to the cars.
“And we never ‘un-invent’ anything, we never forget what
we’ve already done. So we’re not dropping any of our technologies in order to
bring the new ones in, we’re just adding to the job”
Despite the challenges, Symonds wholly supports the rule changes
and hopes they will prove to the outside world the kind of ‘green’ progress
that cutting edge motorsport can provide.
“Formula One, I think, is guilty of far too often hiding its
light under a bushel and a lot of the very great things we do as engineers in
Formula One we like to keep to ourselves and I think it’s time for that to
change.
“I think it’s time for the world to know what we are doing
with Formula One powertrains in 2014 is really quite advanced. It really is something
new, it really is the way of the future and therefore I think we can stop - before
it happens - those who may wish to criticise Formula One and motor sport in general
for carbon emissions.
“Fossil fuels are here to stay, let’s use them efficiently
and I think Formula One is doing that, and I think we should be very proud of
what we’re doing and we should tell the world what we’re doing.”
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