Former family business Williams aims 'to get its pride back' - Capito

Williams boss Jost Capito vows to give its pride back to the British outfit which has transformed from a family business into a "well-structured engineering company".

Historically, with nine world championship titles and 114 wins, Williams Racing remains the third most successful team in the history of Formula 1 behind Ferrari and McLaren.

But the Grove-based outfit hasn't won a race since 2012, and even Pastor Maldonado's shock win in Barcelona back then was but a brief reprieve in a victory drought that started in 2004.

Even worse, a downward spiral started in 2018 pushed Williams down the order where it lingered for three seasons as it merely made up the numbers.

But the Williams family's decision to sell its team to US private equity firm Dorilton Capital ushered in a new era and revived hopes of a re-birth.

Now at the helm of the outfit, former Volkswagen Motorsport boss Jost Capito has initiated in the past twelve months a significant restructuring, making several key hires, such as his former VW colleagues François-Xavier Demaison, who is now the team's technical director, and Sven Smeets, Williams' new sporting director.

Capito reflected on his first year in charge at Williams and on the "critical changes" undergone by the team.

"First of all, you have a high respect if you come into Williams," Capito said, quoted by Motorsport.com. "This is a team with a huge heritage with huge success in the past."

"We did not make a lot of personal changes, we did some critical changes. And I think what helped a lot is to improve the spirit and to give the pride back to the team.

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"We don't accept any more to be last, we want to move up the grid, and we work hard to do that, and we need the spirit and we need to enjoy that journey.

"I think that was the main thing and then fighting for points and getting in the position that we got some points and then like the icing on the cake, the podium in Spa, boosted not just the team on the race track but boosted the whole company.

"We also we developed processes, we developed different structures. We improve the communication within the company. We developed our values for the company and the behaviours we want to have in the company.

"I think we came from very much from a family business to a well-structured engineering company."

With the first stage of Williams' transformation completed, Capito has made clear that pulling Williams up the grid, let alone restoring its former lustre, will be a long drawn-out process that is only just beginning.

"To bring the team back to where we want to be from where we have been in 2020 is a long way," he admitted.

"It's not something you can fix and undo in one year, so there's more to do than has been done.

"I think compared to the top teams we still were lacking that we didn't have investment over the last years. And from last year, we were limited by the cost cap as well.

"But everybody started from scratch with a new car and it's very difficult to say where everybody starts out of the box. So for us progress will be how we can improve compared to the competition."

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