From Autoweek:
ROKiT Williams Racing deputy team principal Claire Williams is calling the team's delay in getting to Formula 1 preseason testing in Barcelona "embarrassing" but refuses to publicly blame anyone.
On Monday, nine of the 10 Formula 1 teams hit the track for the first day of preseason testing, but Williams F1 was nowhere to be seen. On Tuesday, it was the same story.
Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, with more than a quarter of the eight days of preseason testing in the books, Williams finally hit the track with rookie George Russell at the wheel.
At least a few reports in the media are pointing fingers at chief technical officer Paddy Lowe. Some are questioning the former Mercedes executive's future at the team, but Williams officials refused to go into detail on the matter.
“It became apparent quite late on that we weren’t going to first make the shakedown and then subsequent to that, not make the first day,” said Williams. “We thought we could get everything that we needed to together in order to make Tuesday, and then parts just weren’t coming through as we hoped they would, and in the time that we hoped that they would.
“So, it transpires that we didn’t make it until today. But I am not going to go into any detail as to why that happened. I don’t think that it’s appropriate to discuss the ins and outs of what went wrong. Completing that inquest anyway has not happened at Grove yet. We’re clearly aware of some of the issues, but it’s too early in the day to start discussing them in any detail and probably something that we wouldn’t do anyway. We need to resolve what went wrong or analyse what went wrong, and then to resolve it so that this doesn’t happen again at Williams.”
When Lowe joined the team in 2017, the team had a car capable of topping the midfield. Since his arrival, the team has slid rapidly down the order until they hit rock bottom, finishing last overall in the F1 Constructors' Championship standings last year.
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