Williams acting team principal Simon Roberts says the British outfit is working with new owner Dorilton “pretty much every day” in an effort to improve itself.
Last month, Formula 1’s third most successful team behind Ferrari and McLaren underwent a change of ownership, with the Williams family passing the reins to New York investment firm Dorilton Capital.
Since, Williams’ new owners are slowly gaining a footing, assessing their new business and how to improve the team’s fortunes in the future.
“We’re now working with the new owners pretty much every day, looking at what we need to do to improve,” explained Roberts in Sochi.
“What the long-term programme is and how do we find some performance for the whole team over a long period of time. There’s no quick fix here. We’re in it for the long haul and so are Dorilton.
Matthew Savage, Dorilton Capital Chairman
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“They’re just trying to right now understand everything they can about the business. They’re super-smart and really nice and easy people to work with, so it’s great having them around,” Roberts added.
“They just come and get involved in everything they can. They obviously were in Mugello, which was great for them and we’re just in that budget setting, looking at investment plans, trying to figure out effectively what’s the first thing to do.
“We don’t want to make mistakes but everything we do is focused on improving our performance in the long term.”
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Save for the introduction of F1’s long-awaited budget cap, regulations will remain largely unchanged next year ahead of the sport’s big transformation in 2022 that will hopefully allow smaller teams such as Williams to make a significant step forward.
But Roberts insists Williams will not “give up on 2021”.
“I think it’s really important to keep the team alive and active and competing – so we’re trying to create a short-term plan and, if we could, repeat the step that the team made this year, going from 2019 into 2020,” Roberts commented.
Williams team boss Simon Roberts
“If we can do something like that, then it puts us in a good position for next year.
“What we don’t want to do obviously is sacrifice efforts towards 2022 because there’s new rules, the new financial regulations will start to bite, so we don’t’ want to lose that opportunity.
“So, I don’t want to go into any specifics but we’re basically looking at all of it and prioritising across a long-time frame.”