Symonds: Mercedes have ‘chinks in their armour’

Williams chief technical director Pat Symonds believes world champions Mercedes are not unbeatable, but admits his team must be nearly flawless to exploit any of “the chinks in their armour”.

The German constructor has been the leading force in F1 in the latest turbo era, securing four titles, 32 wins, 36 pole positions with its works outfit over the past two years. Meanwhile, Williams has experienced a revival after more than a decade of struggles.

The British outfit has scored one pole and 13 podiums, and even challenged for outright victory on a number of occasions like Austria and Abu Dhabi 2014 and Silverstone 2015.

“Even if you get as dominant a situation as Mercedes have got, we are not in the McLaren 1988 era when they absolutely win every race [with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost],” Symonds told UK news agency Reuters.

“Mercedes have chinks in their armour. There aren’t many because they are an amazingly strong team but we’ve got to be there for those days.

“At the same time we have to keep pushing ourselves so we are not [just] looking for that way of doing it, ultimately what we want to do is beat them fair and square. That’s what we’ve got to aspire to.”

Since 2014 and its return to form, the Grove-based outfit has missed out on several strong results because of mistakes, which include lengthy pit stops, conservative strategy calls, or fitting two different tyre compounds on the same car.

Symonds agrees that Williams will need to be on top of its game in order to defeat Mercedes.

“We certainly made far too many operational errors last year, there’s no doubt about it. In my pre-season briefing to the guys at the beginning of the year we concentrated a lot on that.

“I can’t say we will be faultless, nobody is immune... but certainly the number of errors we made was way too high and we are working hard to try and improve that.”

Key dates for the 2016 F1 season