Pastor Maldonado was handed only a €10,000 euro fine by race stewards at Silverstone, despite calls from Sergio Perez, the driver he took out of the race, for them to take strong action against the Venezuelan. Maldonado and Perez collided on lap 11 as Perez tried to pass the Williams around the outside at Brooklands corner. Maldonado appeared to drive outwards, towards the Sauber and they touched, spinning both off the race track and Perez into retirement. This followed the incident in Valencia where Maldonado took Lewis Hamilton out in the closing stages of the race, for which he was More…

An interesting move today was made by Williams, which is going into the season with Pastor Maldonado and Bruno Senna as its drivers. The pair have just 45 Grands Prix starts between them and Williams clearly feels that it will be advantageous to have an experienced head like Wurz in the garage, as a driver mentor. The Austrian, who runs his own driver coaching business called Test & Training International, masterminds the FIA Institute Young Driver Excellence Academy, now in its second year. Wurz, who took three podiums in his 69 race F1 career, will attend the races this season More…

Frank Williams declared 2012 as a “truly fresh start” for his team as it launched the new FW34 on the morning of the first day of testing at Jerez. The multiple former champions endured what can only be described as an annus horribilis last year as it slumped to the worst constructors’ championship finish in its rich championship-laden history, ninth, after scoring five points all year. But the new season already has a renaissance feel about it with the team reuniting with its former engine supplier Renault – who it won its last world championship with back in 1997, at More…

With a month to go before the start of the new car testing season and two months to the first race there are still two race seats available. Many seats were filled in the weeks leading up to Christmas with Lotus Renault, Toro Rosso and Force India filling in their entry cards. But what of Williams and HRT? The contenders for Williams seem quite straight forward; Rubens Barrichello is the choice of the Williams engineers, who rate the Brazilian highly and were pleased with his performances in the closing stages of last season. Meanwhile Adrian Sutil has experience, is fast More…

It was good to see today that Williams has joined forces with Renault again, recreating a partnership which dominated F1 racing in the 1990s. Together they won four Drivers’ and five Constructors’ world titles and 63 race victories. The circumstances are rather different this time, in that Williams joins a list of customers including Red Bull Racing, Lotus Renault GP and Team Lotus. Back in the 1990s it was for a the works team, with Ligier and then Benetton coming along in 1995 to also get the engine. The deal is for 2012 and 2013 for the current V8 engines, More…

Williams has recruited two new senior engineers as it faces up to a new future under the technical direction of Mike Coughlan. They have hired the highly regarded Mark Gillan as Chief Operations Engineer. Gillan worked at Jaguar Racing and Red Bull before quitting F1 to take up a professorship at the University of Surrey. He starts work on October 1 and will be in action from the Japanese Grand Prix onwards. Also announced today is the new head of aerodynamics, Jason Somerville, an ex Williams employee who has been at Toyota and Renault in recent years. He starts work More…

Williams has announced details of the long expected changes to its technical department, with the controversial appointment as chief engineer of Mike Coughlan, who was centrally involved in the McLaren/Ferrari Spygate scandal of 2007. Williams chairman Adam Parr said that the team needs “a fresh approach”. Sam Michael has resigned after 11 years as Technical Director and will leave the team at the end of the season. His short term role will be to oversee development of the 2011 car to unlock its potential, which has not been seen to date. The team will evaluate Coughlan’s suitability to become Technical More…

It’s easy to forget that Rubens Barrichello is a three times winner of the Italian Grand Prix, including last season at the wheel of the Brawn car. This year he is unlikely to be among the contenders, but the Williams team is optimistic of getting at least one car into Q3 tomorrow. In light of what has been going on this week with the Ferrari team orders situation, Barrichello’s point of view as the man who moved over for Michael Schumacher on one or two occasions is enlightening. I spoke to him in Spa and caught sight of an interview More…