So, Williams has had a peculiar season.

That win in Barcelona was extraordinary and a fabulous piece of driving by Pastor Maldonado.

Maldonado has regularly been near the top ten, but a series of blunders has limited points.

Obviously there was the 8 year win less streak that ended, but the team still sits 8th in the championship, with little hope of gaining seventh. That has to be disappointing. The drivers have to take their share of blame, but as the season has progressed, the team has slipped down the order.

Except from Singapore - and we know Pastor is a street specialist - the last few races have been a bit middling. It's better than the FW33, but how much of their early form was down to the tyres rather than the car?

Is this Williams coming back from the brink or not?

_________________

Bahrain Grand Prix review

Maybe a good initial design that, with the added boost from the Renault engine, delivered legit front-running pace for the first few races but then wasn't developped efficiently? Like Lotus last year.

You can't say form is "down to the tyres" rather than the car. An all-around decent car that is gentle on its tyres is a good car. A fast car that destroys a set in two laps is a bad car.

Also you have to wonder where they would sit in the WCC if they had maximized their early advantage. They were legitimately fast until Valencia but lost a huge amount of points through Maldonado's numerous mistakes, Senna's lack of pace and some unreliability. They really can't afford to have two inconsistent drivers.

_________________

I think they've really fallen back in the development race. They started off the year well because everyone was struggling to understand the tyres so it's basically a level playing field, and Spain was a circuit that all teams know very well, and they just managed to hit the sweet spot on setup.

_________________

With better drivers they'd be better than 8th for sure. That car should have had more than one podium in the first half of the season. As I've said before, I can't help but wonder what Raikkonen would have done in that car.

_________________


Online Racing Game!
Follow me on Twitter!

Mark Gillan has left the team.

_________________

Bahrain Grand Prix review

Please don't tell me he'll write a book next year and reveal that Toto wolff pushed him out

Where is Mark Gillan going. William says he leaves because he needs to "spend more time with his family". Is Mercedes his family and he needs spend more time with Mercedes new 60% wind tunnel

+1 there!

_________________


Human at Sight,
Monster at Heart!

Might be good for Williams too if Wolff concentrates to team only, though Valtteri needs a new manager.
http://www.auto123.com/en/racing-news/f1-toto-wolff-unlikely-to-remain-driver-manager?artid=151628&utm_medium=feeds&utm_source=feed-F1&utm_campaign=feeds

Tell you what, I think Kimi couldve achieved more in the Williams than the Lotus, going on the front page news story phil.

I'm concerned about Williams' prospects for 2013 (and onwards). 2012 was a massive missed opportunity, what with Bruno's qualifying woes and Maldonado's issues with anything that moved.

But now they've lost multiple strong figures in the past months and have promoted a relative unknown (in terms of senior level racing experience) in Bottas. If Williams has similar performance in their car to 2012 and Maldonado can maintain the level headedness that he showed at the very tail end of last season then the team should be points contenders, but. But.

As much as I like Maldanado, theres no consistency to match his speed; he is either blisteringly erratic or consistently poor. Bottas is unknown but I dont believe the two could carry a team on a WDC mount.

If only Rubens was still on the grid.

I'm not sad Rubens is gone. He would have done better for Williams in 2012 than either Senna or Maldonado but his time was up. Time for fresh blood.

Rubens would have been consistently good for Williams in 2012, but would he have won that race in Spain? I think not. The thing is with spending too much time in the sport is that you lose motivation and desire to give your absolute best, and especially after 2009, when he had a genuine chance of becoming a world champion, I think that fire in Rubens was completely blown out.

But these young drivers aren't afraid to go b*** out and go for glory. Perez and Hulkenberg seem to have that sort of personality, contrary to, in my opinion, Paul Di Resta, who you can argue does have the skill, but not the passion to push himself and his team forward.

_________________

I think Bottas could destroy Pastor performances based on how good i think he is... Williams need to hire one top driver and one potential great rookie like Bottas. Top drivers which i mean could be Raikkonen, Hamilton, Vettel, or Alonso. I think they wouldn't be able to afford them. So what they could do only hire experience and quite fast driver like Webber, Button, or Kobayashi, just to improve their performance a little bit more with good direction. With two rookie and inexperienced driver (for me Pastor is not experienced enough), Williams seems having no good direction towards 2013 onwards. I don't know, but it's true that anyone bar RB is struggling about money.