“There’s a Williams stationary…It’s Damon Hill!” So commented Murray Walker back in 1996, when a Williams car standing motionless by the track was a matter of great significance in the Championship race, a far cry from now.
Back then, Hill’s failure to finish the penultimate Grand Prix still left him ahead of team-mate Jacques Villeneuve, with the Englishman duly completing victory and securing the Drivers Championship in Japan, his last race for the manufacturer before moving to Arrows, while Villeneuve’s challenge in the same race ended when he lost a wheel.
Since then, however, the wheels have come off in a rather more profound way. Villeneuve may have tasted world championship glory himself in 1997, the fourth Williams driver in six years to do so, but those glory days soon passed and now the team is down among the weakest on the grid, a huge fall from grace they will hope newly-announced team principal James Vowles can tackle.
He takes over a team that finished bottom of the Constructors’ Championship with a mere eight points, which begs the question of whether it is the specifics of the engineering and motorsport gears that are being presented to the drivers that matter, wider design issues, money or the quality of the men behind the wheel that are most responsible for this sad state of affairs.
Having held vital engineering and strategy roles at Mercedes, Brawn GP, Honda and BAR, Mr Vowels will doubtless leave no stone unturned in seeking a return to glory.
Pointing to the “incredibly rich heritage” of the team, the new principal remarked: “The team is an icon of our sport, one I greatly respect, and I am very much looking forward to the challenge.”
By bringing in such an experienced and distinguished operator, Williams will hope this is the time when the years of underperformance will finally be addressed. It may be a long road back to the glory days of the 1990s, but this may just be the first step.
