Williams Racing stopped development on their 2022 car after it became clear that they were never going to be in a position to lift themselves off the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship, according to former Team Principal Jost Capito.
Williams scored only eight points across the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, four by Alexander Albon and two each for Nicholas Latifi and Italian Grand Prix stand-in Nyck de Vries, who replaced Albon when he came down with appendicitis.
Speaking ahead of his recent departure from Williams, Capito revealed that whilst the big upgrade they brought to the FW44 at Silverstone helped move the team forward, it was still not enough for them to become regular contenders for the top ten, and it was decided therefore to focus fully on the development of the 2023 car.
“When you see from there that shortly after, the gap to the ninth and eighth, is too big, that it doesn’t make sense to put effort in this year’s car,” Capito is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com.
“You would stay tenth, and then you miss out on putting the effort in next year’s car. So when we saw that we’ll be tenth, it doesn’t matter what the gap is, then put all the effort into next year’s car.
“That’s what we did shortly after we had the big upgrade at Silverstone.”
Capito says Williams need to improve in 2023, but he admits that despite the introduction of the cost cap into Formula 1, it will still take time for the field to close up as intended as infrastructures of each team were different heading into the cost cap era.
“We’re still not there where the others are,” Capito said. “That’s why it needs really the long-term view until it’s balanced.
“You say, ‘oh you all now have the same money, so you should be all on the same level’ – no, the teams went on different levels into the cost cap. We see Williams before the cost cap had hardly anything to invest for years. So they fell behind.
“Now to catch up with the same amount that everybody has, it’s not just solved by throwing money at it.”
