For anyone at or around my age (that age being twenty-ni in my twenties), who got into Formula One during the early to mid 1990s, Williams are the iconic Formula One team. Before the era of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari's board-sweeping domination, or our current iconic theme of finger-pointing, fizzy pop-emblazoned teutonic glory, there was Williams, Renault, Mansell, Hill, Villeneuve, Rothmans, Camel, Prost, Newey, Frentzen and the rest.
But all that was long ago, and but for a brief fillip during their BMW-aligned years, when they racked up semi-regular race wins and occasionally (i.e. once) sort of half-flirted with the championship, the Williams trajectory has been pretty much straight down since then. The nine-times constructors champions last secured a title in 1997, and are now mired in a 127-race winless streak which doesn't look like being broken any time soon.
The 2011 season was their nadir to end all nadirs. Despite some boisterous pre-season mutterings about their new car's neat and compact design, with its super-tiny gearbox and associated near-invisible rear end, Williams lurched from disaster to disaster throughout the year, ending up with just five championship points in a return that represented the team's worst-ever F1 season since the inception of Williams Grand Prix Engineering in 1978.
Aside from their dwindling performance on track, the team's finances have also been through the wringer. Over the last few years Williams have lost more sponsors than Tiger Woods post-infidelity bombshell, and their recent stock market flotation hasn't exactly been a roaring success. Even with Pastor Maldonado in one seat throughout 2011 and into 2012 with healthy backing from the Venezuelan PDVSA oil company, reportedly pumping up to £30 million into the team, the future still looks shakey.
That is why plenty of people have linked today's announcement of Bruno Senna in their second seat for the 2012 season as another strictly money-based decision, the team picking the well-sponsored Brazilian over the seemingly more dependable forms of Rubens Barrichello and Adrian Sutil. And now, with two paydrivers in place for next season, something even HRT haven't reduced themselves to, it appears to serve as a brand new low point for F1's former dominators.
But, ignoring the strictest definition of being a 'paydriver', Senna's signing could also be seen as something else, something slightly more aggressive from a team aching to make some sort of a comeback after their pitiful 2011 experience. Despite having been around the F1 paddock since the start of 2010, Bruno remains something of an enigmatic ball of potential. Although he has the money and the famous surname, Williams are gambling on there being plenty more untapped skill to come from the man described by Ayrton himself as being Senna 2.0. "If you think I'm fast, just wait until you see my nephew," he noted in 1993.
A season with hapless HRT was never really going to prove anything beyond the fact that it's hard to score a point in a rubbish and undeveloped car, and he showed flashes of promise for Renault in his late-season cameo last year, including stellar qualifying performances in Belgium and Brazil, and his points-scoring run at Monza in what by then was a very ordinary R31. During his eight races for the team, Vitaly Petrov only outscored him by three points to two.
And even if his sponsors had some bearing on the team's decision, then so what? Had they opted for Sutil, they would also have benefited from personal sponsors, while Barrichello had admitted that even he had been advised to drum up some backing if he wanted a 2012 seat. Bringing cash to the team wasn't the USP that got Senna the drive, it was just a mandatory requirement to even get in the frame. If they just wanted a slightly rubbish driver with a sack of sponsors, then Petrov was also available.
The main alternatives, Sutil and Barrichello, would have offered dependability and reliability. Two sets of unyielding shoulders to doggedly and patiently accumulate whatever finishing positions the new car deserved. But Williams are aiming for more than that in 2012. Their new deal for Renault engines, coupled with a complete overhaul of their technical staff to draft in the likes of ex-McLaren Spygate naughty boy Mike Coughlan, represents a desire to radically overhaul their fortunes. And one adjective you can say does not apply to Sutil or Barrichello is 'radical'. Either in the traditional, or the Milhouse-ian sense of the word.
Whether Senna himself is in any way the sort of radical choice to push the team forwards remains to be seen, but as an unpolished and unproven talent it is far too early to really call that either way. He could end up floundering, but then he could not. And that sort of gamble from a team that some 15 years ago was offering a seat in one of the best cars on the grid to a languid Canadian Indycar driver with silly hair could just be the sort of bold move that shocks them back onto the right track.
Of course it could all go horribly wrong, and maybe the long-term legacy of their Senna move will be one of a failed surname-based grab for attention. But here's hoping that Bruno can push them somewhere higher than their 2011 level. If only so that those boyhood memories don't feel quite so pathetically distant any more.
Trackback(0)
TrackBack URI for this entryComments (0)
Subscribe to this comment's feedWrite comment
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
