WilliamsF1 better than last year

Even though the team has only been able to secure one victory so far this season the performances of both Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher sees them second and third in the Drivers championship. The team itself lies second in the Constructors championship, with a twenty seven point lead over third placed McLaren. At the same time in 2001 the WilliamsF1 team saw itself behind McLaren in third.

Obviously any comparison with the other Formula One teams does not include Ferrari who have been by far the best team of the season, having won the Drivers title for Michael Schumacher and rapidly moving towards securing the Constructors title.

Despite the performance of the Ferrari team Head still sess 2002 as a year in which the WilliamsF1 team has moved forward. Head, in Autosport, commented on the season so far by saying: “We are a lot stronger than last year. The deficit to Ferrari cannot be overseen, but we are working on closing the gap.“

In appraising the races so far Head added “In a few races this year we have had a very strong showing, unfortunately it is the opposite in some other races. This means that in the future we have to concentrate harder on our reliability”.

"We're not pretending we're as good as Ferrari this year, we're clearly not, but we're better than we were last year, and we hope we'll be even better next year.

"We're certainly behind, and we're obviously working on closing that gap. We've had some races where we've been strong this year, and most races not so strong. What we've got to look at is consistency as well."

The team went through a period where they were not able to produce results in the race despite both drivers qualifying very well, for Juan Pablo this saw him secure five pole positions in a row. They were let down by tyre problems, reliability issues, poor strategies, fuel rig problems, and in some races driver mistakes.

But the team has continued to work hard to resolve these issues and in the last Grand Prix in Germany the team was able to turn things around and have both drivers finish on the podium, with Juan Pablo second and Ralf third. This was to allow them to improve on their points lead over McLaren.

With the teams now only two weeks away from the next Grand Prix in Hungary the WilliamsF1 team and Patrick Head are not going to rest on their laurels but continue to push ahead to ensure a second place finish in the constructors title.