Claire Williams says there are no concerns over Williams Racing’s 2020 budget, feeling they have healthy funds heading into the new season.
On the back of Williams’ worst season in Formula 1 in 2019, where only one point was scored across the twenty-one races, a number of sponsors have opted to depart the team. These include Polish oil company Orlen (following Robert Kubica’s departure as George Russell’s team-mate), Unilever, Symatec, Omnitude and Tata Communications.
However, Nicholas Latifi’s arrival, coupled with the backing of his father Michael, has offset most of those departures, while selling a majority equity stake in sister company Williams Advanced Engineering has seen that money be moved into the racing team.
Claire Williams, the deputy Team Principal of the Grove-based team, says she is happy with the finances that Williams has for 2020 as they aim to turn around their fortunes and begin a fight back.
“Sponsorship is hard, it isn’t easy,” said Williams to Motorsport.com. “We all know that and I don’t think any team is finding the sponsorship market in F1 very easy.
“Our business model actually relies heavily on sponsorship and it’s never easy. It hasn’t been for the past decades, but we still managed to find a healthy racing budget with which to do what we need to do over the course of the year.
“We have that going into this year. Obviously as you all know, we sold a majority stake in Advanced Engineering, the proceeds of which come into the F1 team, in order to bolster the budget as well. So I have no concerns over the racing budget for 2020.”