Following both controversy over team orders in last week’s Malaysia Grand Prix and their strongest result since 2012, the mood is one of optimism heading towards this week’s race for the Bahrain Grand Prix for Williams Racing.
The team managed 7th and 8th with Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas respectively, although it could well have been very different at Sepang. Massa was given a team order to allow Bottas through to have a go at Jenson Button’s McLaren. The order in question was “Valtteri, is faster than you”, highly reminiscent of the infamous team order at Ferrari, “Fernando, is faster than you” which was given while team orders was outlawed in 2010 where Fernando Alonso went on to win the race and Massa never seemed like the same driver again. Massa refused to let Bottas through. Deputy team principal Claire Williams later admitted that the situation “was not handled correctly”. Development driver Susie Wolff also said she did not agree with the use of team orders on Sky Sports F1 this evening.
Williams Apologises
Williams has since apologised to both drivers and also the fans after it has emerged that the order given, or specifically the way in which the order was given, was not received that well in Brazil, where two of their major sponsors, their star driver, and their reserve driver, are all from. Should the order had been given in a different manner, and should Massa’s race engineer had said over the radio that they would have switched the drivers back should Bottas fail to pass Button, then perhaps he may have agreed to let the Finn through. Williams has not ruled out using team orders again in the future but will allow the drivers to race more. The two drivers also seem to still be on good terms with each other and with the team, unlike in 1981 where Carlos Reutemann refused to let team leader and reigning world champion Alan Jones through. Both drivers eventually lost out in the title race to Brabham’s Nelson Piquet Snr. The two drivers in that case had a poor relationship with each other following that incident.
The Bahrain International Circuit is one with high speed straights, some tricky heavy breaking zones, and a few really high speed sections. Williams performed very well there in pre-season testing, where they were usually second only to the Mercedes. However since then, and in free practice, it seems a lot of teams have caught up and in the evening session held under floodlights, six teams were all within half a second of each other. Williams was one of those teams along with the likes of Ferrari and Red Bull. Felipe Nasr had his first outing in a Formula One session this morning as he took part in FP1 whilst juggling his GP2 series race weekend as well.
It has been a far stronger start to the season than last year, with Bottas currently in 8th place on 14 points and Massa in 10th on six points, behind former teammate Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari on count back. The team also lie 4th in the constructor’s standings on 20 points, ten behind Ferrari and just one ahead of Force India who perhaps haven’t scored as many points as they could have with the various misfortunes for Sergio Perez, and also five points ahead of reigning champions Red Bull Racing.
It appears that being the ‘best of the rest’ may prove to be trickier than first anticipated for Williams, whose Martini sponsorship has been replaced by the word ‘Racing’ as alcohol advertising is banned in Bahrain, much like in 1996 where they were sponsored by Rothmans and tobacco advertising was banned in certain countries. However they did look slightly better in terms of tyre wear compared to some teams, including Mercedes, and also looked very strong in the breaking zones. Predicting where they will finish will be tough, but a double points finish would be a strong result, hopefully this time, from a racing perspective, without team orders.
Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter – @Craig_O_F1. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport – and “liking” our Facebook page.
Interested in writing for LWOS? We are looking for enthusiastic, talented writers to join our Motor Sports writing team. Visit our “Write for Us” page for very easy details in how you can get started today!
