Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Williams 1% away from victories - Symonds

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Williams is just "one percent" away from being able to win races, according to chief technical officer Pat Symonds.

Following a period of decline, Williams bounced back in 2014 to become the nearest challenger to Mercedes on a number of circuits but failed to win a race as Mercedes took 16 victories and Red Bull three. This season, Williams has remained a consistent podium challenger but failed to close the gap to the leaders.

Symonds says Williams needs to find an extra one percent with its car to be able to win races but also warns the team is still not at its best operationally to be able to take every chance which comes its way.

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“I want to be winning - there is no point in doing anything else,” Symonds told the official Formula One website. “Where are we from winning? We are, in raw performance terms, about one percent off from where we need to be.

“Operationally we are still a little bit immature [too]. Mercedes have a pretty good team - not without mistakes as we have seen in Monaco - but under pressure mistakes can happen. We are not quite were I want us to be operation-wise.

“So all I want is over one percent more on raw performance - and a very slick operation.”

Felipe Massa's third place at the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday was Williams' third podium of the season.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.