British GP: Smedley takes responsibility

Qualifying for the 2014 British Grand Prix would see both Williams Martini drivers fail to make it past the first period of qualifying. Qualifying would see varied weather conditions with rain falling at times but then the track would start to dry. It was in this environment that a decision that would be made that would see the Williams cars go out late in the opening period, running on medium tyres, only to be affected by further rain. While they were waiting in their pits the Williams team would see both drivers drop down the order.

This would see neither Valtteri Bottas or Felipe Massa able to improve on their lap times thus failing to make the cut. It was a decision that Head of Performance Engineering Rob Smedley said was a risky one but it was done out of a aim to challenge for pole position.

Smedley said: “I don't think you can call it an unnecessary risk because if it comes off that's how you get on the front row, that's how you get pole positions, that's how you are able to keep the team pushing forward and to outscore your rivals in terms of points.”

When asked as to whether the team was looking to put one of their cars on pole Smedley replied: “Of course we were.

“That's what this team is now about, it's about achieving excellence and it's about aiming for the very top. Sometimes you're going to fall over doing it but it's exactly the same as what I said after Austria and after many races; you have to live through a little bit of pain and you have to make sure you come out the other side having learned about that pain and the mistakes that you made and how not to make them again. It's all a process and it's all about getting to a place where we want to be. Not tomorrow but in the medium and long term.”

Smedley added: “Essentially, why did we go out late? We went out late because you never know what is going to happen. We didn't know that it was going to dry up towards the end of Q1. It started to look like that from early on in Q1 but we thought that if it started to rain again and people had to go out on inters then we wanted to be out kind of in the middle of the session and to be out there just to do one run.

“So we wanted to be out there in the middle of the session with the right fuel in the car, do one run and then have three new sets of intermediates for the rest of the session. Obviously that was with the information that we had at that time.”

As for who was responsible to the failure Smedley said: “I take the responsibility. It was fairly simple: we got out too late in the final run and got caught out by the weather. That’s fundamentally what happened today.”