Williams: External suppliers, budget not to blame for 2019 F1 car delay

Williams has stressed that the delay in producing its 2019 Formula 1 car was not down to external suppliers or any financial constraints.

Williams was unable to ready its FW42 in time for the start of last week’s opening pre-season test, with the car finally hitting the track midway through the third day.

Its first test was largely focused on basic aerodynamic data gathering, with the cars completing minimal mileage and often at a slow speed, but it has so far amassed substantial laps this week.

Deputy Team Principal Claire Williams was coy on the cause last week but, while still hesitant to reveal full details, was keen to rule out certain suggested factors.

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“I still can’t give you a full breakdown,” she said.

“As I said, I stand by last week – wouldn’t necessarily want to either. I don’t think it’s right to go into great glorious detail as to what happened.

“I think there were many stories around what potentially could have been the cause of it.

“A couple I read was that there were issues with external suppliers – that wasn’t the case – or that financially, we were in a difficult position and that had an impact on car build – it didn’t.

“I know a couple of teams have come out in support of what happened to us.

“I think we take for granted sometimes that we’re going to get one car to the test track and two cars to a race track but Williams still designs and builds our race cars in house, in their entirety.

“There are 22,000 parts to a car which we have to design, manufacturer, assemble, which we have to put through crash testing – and that’s an enormous job – and we didn’t make it for a number of reasons.

“It has compromised our test programme to a degree. We’re trying to make up for the time we have lost. I hope when we get to Australia or probably a bit further down the line, we will have forgotten about it and we will move forward and we come here next year, we’ll have a car to run from 9am in the morning.”

Williams added that the relatively late confirmation of this year’s regulations contributed to the delay.

“There were some technical directives that didn’t come out until relatively late, which doesn’t help, particularly a team like ours, when we don’t have the additional budget and therefore resource to throw at something if it comes in late,” she said.

“We have a very tight plan, with very stringently controlled budgets to affect that plan and if something is thrown in in the last minute, you then have to find additional resource to either do a U-Turn or do what you have to do to facilitate the change,

“There were a few incidents like that. You can’t predict that but you should certainly plan for it and build in contingency. It’s something we have to take into consideration for the next car build time.”