F1 2016 preview: Pat Symonds on the future of Formula 1

“The engines raced for the first time in 2014, but their conception goes back to 2007-2008. Back then, there was no financial crisis. Sponsorship was still quite plentiful. Society’s big concerns were CO2 and energy security. Western oil reserves were low. The whole idea made a lot of sense. It was very important not to be seen as a formula for consumption but for efficiency. The cost of development wasn’t so important.

“Move forward to 2014. The engines were ready but the world was different. The US now had ample oil through fracking. The price of a barrel of crude was $40, not $120. CO2 was still important, but people were also talking about clean air and particulates. And the worldwide recession had knocked advertising and sponsorship budgets for six. We were a bit out of sync with the world, but so were many other parts of industry and society. But what we’d achieved was still very relevant.”

Symonds believes F1 should not feel the least bit apologetic for its powertrain achievement. The sport did the right thing and continues to do so. “We can’t go back to gas guzzling,” he insists. “That would be wrong on every level.”

If electric road cars are to take off as more than urban vehicles, Symonds believes, there will need to be a breakthrough in battery technology. “Take a look at the roadmap for CO2 reduction laid out by the UK Automotive Council between now and 2050. It depends on the development of much better batteries. I don’t say motorsport will necessarily produce that breakthrough in battery chemistry, but we’ve been pretty good at these things in the past, and we can provide a pretty good test bed to take things further.”

Talking about his own team’s prospects, Symonds admits that early Williams success after his 2013 arrival (the team scored much-improved third positions in the constructors’ championship in 2014 and 2015) tends to make improvements look easy to achieve, which they emphatically aren’t. Especially when the team is operating for the third year on a budget close to the £110 million of the past two seasons. (By comparison, the F1 grapevine says Manor spends about £80m, Mercedes and Red Bull have about £200m, and Ferrari’s budget is believed to be £250m-plus).

If your budget is limited, says Symonds, deciding how to spend it becomes a special challenge. “An F1 team is mostly an R&D operation. In road car R&D, maybe 80% of what you do doesn’t work, but success with the other 20% makes it all worthwhile. But in racing, when you’ve got less to spend than your rivals, you have to do better.”

Symonds takes a novel but logical view of the scale of investment in grand prix racing, so often portrayed in the tabloids as enormous. “Road car companies spend billions on R&D,” he says, “so a few million spent in F1 is neither here nor there…”

Interestingly, the expenditure disparity between teams can be as visible in relative performance in a year of stable regs as in one where everything changes. A lot of advantage flows from attention to detail – which costs money. Teams like Williams must back themselves to pick the areas in which improvements will be particularly productive. Even so, Williams has a new car for 2016 that Symonds describes as “very evolutionary”.

Stable years tend to move cars closer, Symonds explains. “I always believe that for a given set of regs, there must be an ideal answer, a perfect design. Of course, you never get there. You don’t get halfway there, probably. But in a stable period, evolution takes everyone closer to this ideal solution, so the racing gets better. Which is why there’s plenty to be said for leaving things alone.”

Having said that, the Williams technical boss admits he prefers shake-up years for their greater intellectual challenge. “Our 2016 car is still new,” he says, “but we’re already working hard on the 2017 car, because there will be lots of changes to dimensions and aerodynamics. We had our first official meeting on it last December, and we’d been talking unofficially before that. So far, I’ve laid down the concept specification, the performance targets. We’ve also done some CFD [computational fluid dynamics] testing but no wind tunnel work yet, mainly because Pirelli hasn’t yet made any tyres, which you need for decent results.”

Could Williams pull off an advantage for 2017 on the scale of the one that delivered Jenson Button and Brawn their world championships in 2009? No reason why not, says Symonds. “Williams is as capable of innovation as anyone,” he says. “We certainly have the talent. If you look back through history, there have been plenty of occasions when an obtuse interpretation of a new set of regs has delivered a big advantage. Some are recent, like the emergence of McLaren’s F-duct, for example.”