Williams jobs safeguarded by Dorilton takeover - Roberts

Williams

Williams jobs safeguarded by Dorilton takeover - Roberts

Dorilton took ownership of the team mid-season last year

Ian Parkes & Ewan Gale

Tuesday 9 February 2021 11:09

Williams team principal Simon Roberts is hopeful the new financial regulations put in place by Formula 1 coupled with last year's takeover has safeguarded jobs.

The world was affected by global job losses in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, with F1 itself no stranger to the financial difficulties imposed by holding no races until July and with the vast majority of events that did run doing so without spectators.

Williams saw the family element of the team stand aside after the Italian Grand Prix last season as US investment company Dorilton Capital stepped in.

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Asked if there had been a morale boost in the knowledge jobs would be saved, Roberts told GPFans Global: “Yeah. I’m very conscious, and lots of the management team are.

“We are a race team, we are an iconic brand but we employ 670 people and they all rely on us for paying the mortgage and putting food on the table and all that kind of stuff and I don’t take that lightly. “It does massively help but, on the other hand, F1 is changing. Now we’re financially secure, we can invest in the right things, we can make sure we’ve got people to do the things that we need to do but it will shift over time. “Things we used to do two years ago perhaps will change to something different in three years' time."

This season will feature a proposed record-breaking 23-race calendar, although this is subject to change in light of the evolving nature of the pandemic, with the Australian GP already postponed to late in the season.

With triple-headers again this year, Roberts is aware the team will have to find ways of coping with the burden of the calendar.

“I don’t want to sound threatening, but we’re going to have to find ways of being more adaptable, more flexible around supporting 23 races," he explained.

"It’s not sustainable if we blindly think we can just expect everyone to go to a winter test and then to events until December.

“We’re going to have to find a way of rotating through that. We experimented with that last year in a really successful way in Turkey.

“We learnt a lot with fantastic support from everybody in the factory, pulling people out to come and help race. The spirit around that was absolutely tremendous. I couldn’t believe it. It was so, so positive.

“That’s the future of F1. No-one knows what else is going to change. We know the rules are changing, we know technology will change.

"We’ve just got to make sure we’re flexible, agile and competitive but, hopefully, with a high degree of security for everyone who works for us.”