Dave Robson, the Head of Vehicle Performance at Williams Racing, has admitted that the decision for both Sir Frank and Claire Williams to depart the team after this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix came as a surprise.
The team were sold to investment firm Dorilton Capital at the end of August in a bid to secure the long-term future of Williams, which during the eighties and nineties were a front-running outfit that took multiple wins and championships.
In recent years, they have flouted with the bottom of the standings too many times and with Formula 1 evolving so much, they were unable to keep up, and as such sought either an investment or a buy-out to help them progress.
“So that news at the beginning of this weekend was a bit of a surprise to us,” Robson is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “And obviously it’s a real shame that it marks the end of an era with the Williams family’s involvement in the team.
“But beyond that, it hasn’t changed what we’ve been doing this weekend. As last weekend, Claire is still here and in charge and the exact ramifications of it going forwards I haven’t really given too much thought to yet.
“It’s a big shock to everyone. And quite how the future will pan out is still a little bit of an unknown, but hopefully it’ll be a good and exciting future. We’ll find out more in the coming weeks, but at the moment we’re very much focused on day to day business at the track.”
Robson is not expecting an interim team boss to be put in place for next weekend’s Tuscan Grand Prix at the Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello, and he anticipates the team working pretty much as they have been so far in 2020 during the second Italian race of the year.
“Claire’s obviously normally at the track, but when she’s here she’s a little bit hands off and quite happy to let those of us who run the engineering side of things keep the show on the road at the races,” said Robson.
“I think, as far as I’m aware, that will be same in Mugello – obviously Claire won’t be there, but there’s often races that she’s not at and we all carry on running the engineering side of things as we normally do.
“And then we’ve got a break before we get to Russia and we’ll see how it pans out.”
