Patrick Head puzzled by Lowe's departure from Mercedes

Williams co-founder Patrick Head is obviously happy with Paddy Lowe's return to Grove but remains perplexed about the reasons why he left Mercedes in the first place.

Following another championship winning season in 2016, Lowe parted ways with the Silver Arrows team at the beginning of the year, and returned to Williams where he worked between 1987 and 1993.

The sudden nature of Lowe's departure however has left Patrick Head scratching his... head.

"For a man that went to Mercedes in 2013 and followed up with three consecutive world championships, one wonders why the situation between Paddy and Christian Wolff fell apart a bit," Head told Sky Sports F1 's Natalie Pinkman.

"Maybe it'll come out in the wash but it certainly seems quite a change.

"I don't think Williams would have gone along and persuaded him to leave Mercedes purely on the basis of salary, facility or budget. Something must have caused  a few cracks at Mercedes."

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On Lowe's contribution to Williams this season, Head says it will likely be on the operational level given his inability to materially impact a car in which he provided no design input.

"The engineering print on the car was created early last year," said Head

"It'll be very difficult for Paddy to come in and make massive changes to this year's car.

"The main thing is to make sure that everybody is working well together, there's proper decision making going on and what direction.

"I don't know the details of it but I know they've been through a period of uncertainty about what worked in the windtunnel and what worked on the track.

"The correlation between tunnel and track is so important that I'm sure that Paddy will put a lot of effort in getting on top of that."

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