Williams 'another two to three years' from full potential

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The Williams F1 team admits it still needs at least another two to three years to start achieving its full potential once more.

Having finished last year in eighth place the constructors championship ahead of Alfa Romeo and Haas, Williams were back in the wooden spoon spot in 2022 standings.

But the squad insists it's not downhearted, and knows that it has plenty of work still to do before it achieves its what it sees as it's true potential.

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Technical director François-Xavier Demaison explained that the current focus was on investment an infrastructure changes at Grove, following the takeover by Dorilton Capital in 2020.

“We’ve been investing a lot of money and effort in the modernisation of the company,” he told the media last month. “For many reasons - mostly financial - Williams have been stuck a bit in the past, so that was the priority.

“Invest in the wind tunnel, invest in the factory and invest in people," he elaborated.

"We are slowly getting to where we are but to build a team you need two to three years," he stated. "And to get the maximum out of this team, it’s another two to three years - so it’s a long journey.

“An engineer is never happy with the speed of evolution,” he continued. “So I won't give you a number because that will indicate where we are. But it’s progressing well, I see a good dynamic.

“The team is working more and more together," he added. "I'm starting to see the type of working atmosphere [I] like. It’s people exchanging, talking and having discussions.

“Sometimes difficult discussions," he acknowledged. "But the strength of a team is when in the locker room you can tell your team-mate that he did a bad job, and you need to be better the next time, and we’re going that way.

"I see the dynamic coming and I’m really looking forward to seeing a result in the future.”

Next year will see another change to the team's driver line-up, with Nicholas Latifi departing after three years at Grove to be replaced by American rookie Logan Sargeant.

Alex Albon remains at Williams for a second year after securing points in Australia, Miami and Belgium since joining the team at the start of the year, despite missing the Italian GP with appendicitis.

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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.