Quantcast
Channel: For Argyll » Brazil
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 7

Susie Wolff promotion meshes with return of Williams as major F1 contender

0
0

In another promotion, and with her husband Toto at Mercedes for the last year, no snide hints at nepotism can cut the mustard in the Oban-branded Susie’s Wolff’s move from Development Driver to Number 1 Test Driver in the British F1 team at Williams Martini Racing.

With a great 2014 season behind them, Williams are clearly making their presence felt at the top of F1 again, after a prolonged drought.

Susie Wolff’s contribution to developing the car has clearly been measureable and is recognised in this promotion. The car is increasingly looking the business  – and particularly so in the way it performed in Felipe Massa’s hands in the relentless pressure he put on Lewis Hamilton in the chase right to the end of the Abu Dhabi race last weekend.

The 2015 season looks like a major adrenaline year for Wolff, an impressively cool headed and determined performer. She has come to prominence in a team with a fascinating history, at a time when its own internal power base is in a process of transition and where its star is in the ascendant.

Once upon a time – it seems now – Williams was the car to drive in F1.

Nigel Mansell won the world hampionship in it in 1992, the first Brit to win that top place since James Hunt in 1976; and the last real British ‘racer’ in the inspirational traditional mould, before F1′s endless annual rule changes to cripple the best to make them vulnerable to the chasing teams – for entertainment – and made F1 the technical procession it too often is today.

Rather than keep a winner, Frank Williams, in what seemed like an ego-driven exercise in reminding drivers who was boss,  dumped him from the drive.

Mansell went off at once  to the American Indy Car series – and won it in his first year of competition. That really was the spirit. He was the first person to win the Indy World Series title in his debut season and the only person to hold both the FI and Indy world titles at the same time. That was some going.

Up to Mansell’s win, Williams had been sporadic but not consistent winners, but the car was coming good – like coming unbeatable.

Williams brought in Alain Prost, who won the world championships for the marque again in 1993. Prost retired at the end of that season and was replaced in the Williams drive by his erstwhile  arch rival, Brazil’s Ayrton Senna – who had finished second to him in the 1993 world championships – and who had  previously said that if you put a monkey in the Williams car it would win.

Senna’s season with Williams coincided with the rise to invincibility of Michael Schumacher, driving for Benneton – for a few years the alternative car to drive and a party central team with Flavio Briatore at its head.

The 1994 season saw Senna lose the first two Grands Prixs to Schumacher, whom he then trailed by 20 points. In the third race of the season, the San Marina Grand Prix at the Imola circuit, Senna was killed when, in explicably, his Williams seemed to turn sharply off the track as he came through the Tamburrello corner and T-boned the concrete retaining wall at about 145 mph. That will remain one of the darkest moments in the history of F1; and around three million Brazilians filled the streets of Sao Paulo for his funeral, recognised as the largest gathering of mourners in modern times.
It has emerged only this year, 2014, on the 20th anniversary of Senn’s death, that just before that race, on 27th April 1994, Ferrari’s President, Luca di Montezemolo, had had  a shot at talking Senna into joining the prancing horse equipe. Ironically, it was Schumacher who would go on to galvanise the Tifosi and see Ferrari become a race team of consistent dominance it had not been been before and has not been since.
Schumacher won the championship that year, 1994 and again in 1995.In 1996, Damon Hill who had driven for Williams in 1993 behind Prost, in 1994 behind Senna and in 1995 with David Coulthard, won the world championship for Williams again – and found himself the next butt of Frank Williams bizarre dump-a-winner move.Williams promoted their second driver, who had run Hill close in the 1996 championships, the young Canadian, Jacques Villeneuve, who drove the car to the world win in 1997 – and never won the championship again [although he was kept on for another season by Williams], nor did he ever again finish in the top three.Since the Villeneuve win in 1997, 17 years ago now, Williams has not won a world championships.In March 2013, Team Principal Sir Frank Williams’ daughter, Claire, was appointed Deputy Team Principal; and in the summer, Executive Director Toto Wolff, Susie’s husband, moved to Mercedes where he has just seen his team win the world drivers’ championship with Lewis Hamilton; and the constructors’ championship.But this year, 2014, with Claire Williams as co-pilot of the team; Susie Wolff driving two First Practice sessions – at Silverstone and the Nurburgring; and with the clearly emergent star driver, Vallteri Bottas with Felipe Massa in the race seats, the Williams car seemed to be on the up and the team resurgent. They took both podium places behind Hamilton at the last Grand Prix of the Season last weekend, at Abu Dhabi; seeing off Ferrari for third place in the constructors’ championship, which means money.The 2015 season is looking hot to trot and if either of the race drivers cannot race one of the Grands Prixs, the utterly estimable Susie Wolff will take the drive.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 7

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images