2017 review: Williams underwhelms amid 40th anniversary celebrations

F1i continues to look back over the whole of the 2017 Formula 1 world championship season team-by-team and driver-by-driver.

Williams

This year, Williams F1 celebrated a remarkable 40 years as an independent constructor in Formula 1. It also welcomed Paddy Lowe back into the fold in a senior management role.

The anniversary would have been made all the sweeter if the team had been able to achieve real progress on the track. Instead, the best their season could offer was a podium finish for rookie driver Lance Stroll in Azerbaijan, which was in no small part thanks to the misfortunes of others.

It's not entirely the teams fault - they were put on the back foot even before the season started, when Mercedes twisted their arm to release Valtteri Bottas. The team made the practical decision to recall Felipe Massa from his months-old retirement, and the Brazilian veteran performed well with 13 finishes in the top ten.

But by the end of the season Williams found itself over a hundred points away from its objective of fourth place in the constructors standings. That's twice the gap of the previous season. The question now is, who will they recruit alongside Stroll to spearhead their efforts in 2018?

Read on: Lance Stroll

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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.