On the penultimate day of testing for the 2019 F1 season, Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe faced RaceFans and other media at the Circuit de Catalunya for the first time since the late arrival of the team’s new car. The FW42, which was originally supposed to run in a filming day prior to the first test, did not turn a wheel until five days later.

Lowe defended the team’s work on its new car, insisted it had lost little ground due to its delayed start and claimed initial impressions from the FW42 were that it represented a step forward over its unsuccessful predecessor, with which the team finished last in the 2018 championship.

One week later, Williams announced Lowe had ‘taken a leave of absence from the team for personal reasons’.

Here is the full text of Lowe’s final media briefing including his answers to every questions in full.

RaceFans: How’s the work getting on after you missed probably about a quarter at least of your running time?

Paddy Lowe: I think the answer would be ‘very well’. Certainly in terms of mileage and rate of learning. We did miss two-and-a-half days and that did put us on the back foot. Having said that barring one issue that we had last Thursday we’ve had very, very strong reliability and achieved the programme that we set out to do each day.

So if all goes well, George is to do his race distances this afternoon and we have Robert in tomorrow doing his qualifying and race distances to mirror that. If we stay on this plan we will have done the same mileage by the end of tomorrow and consumed all the sets of tyres available that we would have had for the full eight days.

Actually a lot of the limitation in pre-season testing is the number of new sets of tyres that you have available. Generally to do an experiment you need a new set of tyres so that becomes one of your primary limitations. So in terms of mileage and number of experiments we will have achieved the same as we originally intended.

I guess the major disadvantage would be that what we do at night is analyse what we’ve learned from the data we’ve gathered and invent different tests and different experiments for the next day. In the context of these new regulations it’s very exciting period actually for development particularly for the aerodynamicists. We’re making the car quicker day with the rate of learning that we can achieve from track work. So inevitably we’ve got a couple or less of those loops compared to the other competition.

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Q: What happened and why was the car late?

PL: That is a very, very complicated matter and frankly I don’t even know the answer because it will take a lot of investigation and analysis. All I can say is two things: Firstly is there won’t be a single answer. It won’t be a matter of saying ‘that thing that went wrong and so on’. And I would say that looking at it as a whole I think in general the thing that has caught us out is the sheer quantity and complexity of parts you have to produce to to make a Formula 1 car these days.

These cars are the most complicated cars in the history of Formula 1. That’s not unique to this year it’s the case almost by definition every year because we have ranks of engineers who are very clever and they make more pieces with greater complexity, greater detail to make them more efficient or faster in some way. So if you take a look through our museum if any of you had the chance it’s a fantastic museum with 40 years’ progression of Williams cars. There in front of you is complexity played out and here we are at the peak. So bottom line, we didn’t have all of the parts we needed to run a car on day one and I’m sure that was a strong factor.

RaceFans: If you take last year’s car which was disappointing and you take it at this stage relative to the competition and take this year’s car relative to the competition, where do you stand?

PL: So [on] pace I’m not going to comment because that’s that’s a dynamic thing at the moment as I said a minute ago. All of us we have to wait to Australia, or possibly even beyond because Australia itself is a rather unusual circuit pace-wise, to see how the story plays out and actually that’s one of the excitements of this time of year.

Reliability, I think we’ve been showing in the days’ running this week that we’re where we need to be. Touch wood – with a car out there doing a race distance that’s a risky thing to say. But it seems seems to be pretty good.

So then the next aspect would be the quality of the car. Robert in particular, who has a lot more experience of last year’s car than George, who only had a brief run, and particularly that Robert has driven the old car around here quite a lot last year, has some very encouraging comments on the qualities of the car. He feels that we’ve made a huge step forwards in terms of the platform, so a car that is far more drive-able, a car that you can work with from a driving point of view. You can control your management of tyres, you can control the balance and the pace, which was definitely not a description you could have given about last year’s car. So that’s very encouraging.

It doesn’t talk about speed but at least it’s a platform. And given that one of our major objectives over the winter was to design and implement a process within our engineering that would make cars with better properties and then go and deliver those better properties, that’s a good step for us and a much better foundation from which to move forwards to the next stage.

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Q: When did the focus switch on to this year’s car last year? Were the problems that we had with last year’s car an influence?

PL: There’s never a single day that you start a new car certainly with, let’s say, a number of people, it’s a progression through the season. I’d say we started really in earnest once it became clear there were new regulations to deal with which was sort of April. And the other part of your question was the performance of last year’s car. [That] absolutely had an effect on how we approached the design of this year’s car.

I mentioned it a minute ago, one of the important things to the car was not the car itself but the process by which we engineered the car, the processes that we use, the techniques and tactics within aerodynamics, within design and so on. We needed to implement a better process for engineering the car. And then the intent being that better process we’ll put into action will deliver a better car. And there’s a long way to go on that but so far so good.

I’m very encouraged particularly with the confirmation from Robert’s comments that we are moving in the right direction and that means we’ve made some moves in the right direction in terms of the design of our engineering process and not particularly just the design of the car. What you don’t want to feel is that you lucked-in. Designing a Formula 1 car shouldn’t be a matter of good or bad luck. It should be about really great engineering and really great understanding of what you’re got to do and how are you going to do it.

Q: How significant is that sort of positive early feedback in terms of making sure there is trust and confidence in the rebuild project that you undertook after last year’s problems? Presumably not getting the car out had an internal impact.

PL: Very important. Success in any in any walk of life, is self-sustaining. Progress breeds more progress and a little bit of confidence breeds more confidence and people gather momentum around that. I often model Formula One as working in a team, needing that virtuous circle, if you if you can generate some success that attracts more success onto it whether it’s income or engineers or all the different components that it takes to build a successful winning Formula 1 team.

One of our important objectives for this year if nothing else is to turn a corner and show that we’re on the way up and not on the way down. So I hope to conclude from this week’s testing that and that’s not something you may necessarily read in lap times. It’s about understanding the quality of the organisation and what it set out to do and whether it’s achieved it.

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RaceFans: Although you won’t talk about pace, at this stage a year ago you knew you were in for a long, hard season. Do you feel the same now or do you feel a lot better.

PL: I think the answer would be ‘much better’. The process of understanding what you’ve got, what challenges you face is long and complicated. And certainly from my own point of view a year on I have much greater understanding of what we’ve got, where our weaknesses are, where we’ve got to build and that we are delivering the right changes to turn those things around. So I feel a lot more confident that we will have more of the right things in place but at the same time completely aware that there is great challenge ahead still. We’re only just beginning.

Q: What level of upgrades will you have for Melbourne?

PL: We’ll have a modest level of upgrade. Will it be a complete re-clothing of the car? No we’re not equipped to do that. In actual fact I think whilst that used to happen a great deal in the past I think the short time between the winter testing and Australia these days doesn’t typically allow complete regeneration of the car even for many of the teams.

As I said a minute ago we’re learning day by day and making the car quicker day by day so we will be taking that knowledge and turning it as much as possible into lap time. We have some great processes in terms of measurement and analysis. You’ve probably seen the cars every day out there with arrays of what we call rakes, aerodynamic surveys of different parts of the car. So a huge program around that which has been incredibly successful.

Q: When did the alarm bells ring that you might be late?

PL: That itself was certainly a bit of a movable thing and part of what we’ve got to go and analyse.

Q: Yesterday Robert was happy about the mileage but he was kind of upset about the program in a way that you were not looking for the set-up solutions. He said that there’s only eight hours left of testing so when you find some time for the drivers to better prepare for the race?

PL: These pre-season tests are a very valuable resource for doing work that you can’t very easily do in Friday sessions. So there’s never a completely right answer as to how you should spend your time. And even within the team one of the biggest points of debate every night and even within the day – and we don’t always agree on it – is ‘what should we do’? How shall we spend run time? How shall we spend our tyres?

And there’s never, by a factor of two or three, there’s never enough time or tyres to do everything that everybody wants to do. We need to cover reliability, we need to cover measurement particularly to improve on our understanding in our development tools back at base. We need to do experiments in the configuration of the car, the fundamental aspects of aerodynamics particularly. And then we need to do set-up. And then we need to do driver preparation for racing.

It’s very difficult, it’s impossible actually, to cover all of those things in the time available. So you have to find the right balance between them and take a judgment. I think that’s a difficult one but what our intent is to bring the quickest possible car to the race drivers for the first race. But equally with them in a good state to exploit it. And we’re doing our best to find that balance.

Q: You’ve mentioned the deficit in last year’s car, what were those and what have you done about them?

PL: I think one of the key characteristics of last year car and you probably heard home race drivers talk about it quite often would have been unpredictability. It was a car that was very difficult to work with because it quite often didn’t do the same thing on one lap as it had done on the lap before.

Particularly with the challenges we face in this sport around tyre exploitation you know it’s one of the most difficult performance areas for the teams. When you have a platform that is inconsistent in that way it compounds the issue of understanding and exploiting the tyres both on single laps and on long runs. So the key thing we wanted to do was produce a car that had what a driver may say is a ‘drive-able platform’. Something where you know you turn into a corner and you know what’s going to happen because it happened last time.

And this is one of the key aspects that has been improved very considerably.

Q: Is that more on the mechanical or the aerodynamic side?

PL: It’s a mixture of everything. As in most things on Formula 1 cars aerodynamics has a very dominant effect. But in combination with the mechanics of the platform.

Q: Are there particular concerns about the amount of time Robert has had to prepare for his return?

PL: I personally don’t have those concerns. I think Robert’s been very impressive particularly with the delayed program as has George. They’ve got in the car when it was time for them to do their thing and they’ve gone out there and done absolutely perfect job. You look at Robert’s program yesterday, 130 laps the last lap as good as the first one. I don’t have any concerns around that. And the same with George. You saw him on Tuesday and again today, don’t forget he’s also a rookie in Formula 1 and he needs to practice equally.

Q: When you found out about the problems you were having did you have any thoughts about your position?

PL: No. As I was asked a minute ago I haven;t paid attention to those sorts of subjects in the media. I’m working very hard. There’s an awful lot to do. [We’re] working well as a as a team at all levels in the company so I haven’t got any concerns on that side.

Q: As part of the review of this situation do you think this needs review of the senior management at the team?

PL: No, I would say what I’ve observed over many years in Formula 1 is there’s quite often the habit of changing the people when things don’t work. What I’ve also observed is the stronger teams are the ones that do exactly not that. Because every difficulty, every problem in a teams is an opportunity to learn. Not only to not repeat it but to be even stronger next time.

I actually came up with that line the previous place so I assume they still use it. Every difficulty will be regretted by the competition because we will come back stronger. But when you have an issue you take that learning and you turn it to your advantage.

What you shouldn’t do is go and get rid of people because you’ve thrown away that experience and that knowledge. It’s very important that a team build and grow together and develop together and become stronger and more effective. And the second answer to that question, that would presume that one could conclude anything so simple as to blame a person in what is an incredibly complicated set of circumstances and requirements.

RaceFans: If one says the senior management is the right one for here, one says you have all these facilities which many of us have seen, when all the systems are good, when all this is happening, how did this happen?

I’m not going to answer that. I think I’ve said it’s a really complicated set of requirements, a complicated situation and I don’t even myself know all the lessons to be learned from that.

Q: What about the development plan for the season? Is that already delayed or do you progress as normal?

PL: It would be dishonest to say that there’s no consequent issue. Clearly with a late car than some of the spares are now you know behind the original schedule. But as I said the beginning by the end of tomorrow, touching wood, but we’re on track certainly at this minute in time to complete the same mileage and consume the same number of tyres that we would have done in the full eight days. We will come to Australia with two race cars and spares. I think with all that we put ourselves back in the game, back on track as though it didn’t happen.

Q: Is that view commonly felt within the team?

PL: I think so. I’m not aware of any different view. I think we all see it as… I think something to bear in mind, I was asked this question a minute ago in the TV pen, it’s not the first time teams haven’t showed up on day one. It is an incredibly difficult task to get a car out to run particularly with the constant desire to keep pushing performance as well. If you’re pushing out the same car that you did last year would be quite easy. So whilst we’ve had a failure in terms of delivery I think in context we’re still here, we have a car, it’s running around very reliably and we’ll put that behind us whilst learning from it to be stronger next year.

Read @DieterRencken’s analysis of the causes of Williams’ plight in the new instalment of his RacingLines column which will be published later today on RaceFans.

2019 F1 season