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The F1 team lost parts in the warehouse due to assembly using an Excel spreadsheet! Looming in the top 5, but sometimes you have to race with one car

 

In the new season it broke down in the first race.

 

 

“Formula 1” has long become synonymous with the phrase “highest technology in automotive manufacturing and motorsport”: hardly anyone has any doubts that any ideas or things in any daring custom workshop with a dream of supercars were at least considered by team engineers. There, even one new steering wheel costs 50-60 thousand dollars due to its unrealistic complexity!
However, F1 has its own gradations of advancement, technology and backwardness. For example, Williams, the worst team of the last decade, has been surviving on the verge of bankruptcy for the last 15 years and has hardly invested in development and technological renewal for two decades. Any development paths were chosen exclusively by the simplest, most well-trodden and understandable ones since the turning point of 2007 - this was perfectly demonstrated by the resume of one of the infrastructure managers of the current Alpin, drowning in endless restructuring, Mark Everest: in 2017, for ArsTechinca, he recalled the moment of a decisive and key transition to virtual simulators instead of focusing only on wind tunnels.
“Right now we have a lot of restrictions. In 2007, everything was different: no prohibitions on the power of supercomputers and computational fluid dynamics CFD (“virtual wind tunnel”), on the time of use, on the number of runs, on shifts and hours in wind tunnels... We had three shifts, we blew parts 24/7. And we got to the point where teams were choosing a method to expand the work: investing in even more complex supercomputers or building a second wind tunnel. We have chosen the CFD route with a plan to double capacity every year. "Williams built the second wind tunnel."
The aerodynamic department sagged, the discrepancy between the correlation of the simulator and real data accumulated as the regulations became more complex, and as a result, the cars turned out to be fundamentally simple by F1 standards and not very promising. Only powerful engines (with luck), the powerful work of the racing team with the settings and the heroism of the pilots helped drag the white-blue-blue equipment somewhere into the top 5 or onto the podium (even during the Mass, for example).
More often than not, Williams missed assembly deadlines and delivered parts for testing and sank into last place.

 

 

However, when a new boss came to Grove in the winter of 2023 - former Mercedes strategist Jace Vowles - he said out loud the extent of the team's backwardness "by 20 years", and after that Albon suddenly began to gain points to 7th place in the Constructors' Championship, at times overtaking Ferrari. , getting into the top 5 and top 7 and giving out all sorts of levels of heroism.
Many in our comments even demanded to stop calling Williams the worst and backward team - not to offend the once great giant and not to mislead.
However, in fact, the legendary British still remain in complete turnaround mode - both last year and at the beginning of this year, the general level of backwardness admired even its workers.
This is a new pack of winter revelations from Vowles and technical director Pat Fry (another ex-Mercedes top): about the power of the Ming era, building a car using Excel, lost parts, processing for urgent assembly and Superman mode. It's been a long time since outsider bosses spoke out about problems so loudly!
Ming Dynasty setting, lack of cost control system
Vowles gave many interviews over the winter about the team's rebuilding process, and as the best and most accurate moment of understanding the full depth of the decline of the once legendary team, he cited the example of a visit to one of the nooks and crannies of the Grove plant during his first summer break at the new base.
“I was walking through the plant with chief operating officer Frédéric Brosseau, just looking around, wondering what changes would be needed, maybe in capacity, equipment or people.
We studied machines. And we saw a specific machine in the composite materials department, which was used to produce parts for the new car. And then you enter the composite materials department and immediately see her. And I didn’t even know or understand what kind of car it was. It turned out to be an etching machine. Fred came in with me and was like, “Just so you know, this is somewhere from the Ming Dynasty [period of the Chinese Empire from the 14th to 17th centuries – Sports].

 

 

So, this car was as long as a motorhome. Usually in Mercedes they are the size of a table. Here's just an example of something I've never gotten myself into before and didn't understand. That's what I talk about when I explain that I'm constantly learning where we need to improve.
In fact, somewhere from the second day I already had a rough idea of how difficult everything would be - as soon as I first walked through the factory door. It doesn't take long to realize that everything at Williams is different compared to what I'm used to [at Mercedes]. And not only in terms of capacity and equipment, but also data processing.
There was not even data on the costs of components or the duration of their production cycle. Or about the number of parts in the queue for production. But if there is not at least one such raw type of data, it immediately becomes clear: you do not understand what is happening in the company, when the parts will be assembled into the machine, in what time frame and whether it will be possible to develop it at all.”
Assembling 20,000 parts from an Excel spreadsheet = a nightmare
Williams abandoned updating the 2023 car back in April - finishing and delivering only already designed parts and upgrades. Since then, Vowles has concentrated on developing a new machine: changing technical processes, reassembling infrastructure, recreating a new corporate culture, promoting the possibility of investing more money in the base (by the way, successfully - thanks to his efforts, the cap on capital investments was raised to $64 million for 5 years).
The team also completely changed its internal vision and technological basis - and the modernization began with the basics of the approach to design and assembly.
“The fire plugging methods used to produce even the 2023 car were banned - for example, modifying and fitting last year’s parts for a new chassis or using metal parts in place of supposed carbon ones. In 2023, all this still happened.
In the end, even just one update to the car that season cost an extraordinary amount - much more than I expected.

 

 

Our chassis immediately turned from several hundred parts into several thousand parts. And this is only one part of the machine. The volume of work has increased tenfold in some areas - and we still have the same limited infrastructure.
For example, we started preparing the 2024 car according to an old habit - by creating an accounting of parts in Excel. It just looked like a joke. With a list of 20,000 individual items, this turned out to be a nightmare—impossible to navigate and update.
Take the front wing - there are 400 different elements in it. And imagine the process when I say that we need to take our one front wing and completely eliminate the metal parts from it, making all the parts out of carbon fiber. You need to log in, parts need to be ordered. And then the question arises: what is more important: the front wing or the front suspension pylon and in what situation? Where will the parts go next, to what stage of control?
Then you have to track the path of each element, and when the number swells to hundreds of thousands of components moving throughout the organization, the Excel spreadsheet becomes completely useless.
After all, you need to know exactly where each individual component is located, exactly how long the production time will take, and when it will go to quality control and pass it. And if there are problems, then everything will need to be repeated.
Formula 1 has moved to this level of complexity, and when you reach it, any organization via Excel will collapse, and any person will collapse. And here we are where we are now. Letters came and went back and forth between people and departments, everyone was looking for missing information. I remember hearing workers assembling the bottom - one said, “I have no idea where this component is,” and went to physically search the plant for specific parts. I'm impressed that the team was able to release and put something together at all. But they did it to themselves.”

 

 

And this is not even the peak of the consequences of excessive concentration on Excel! Renault's previous failure in 2016 (9th place in the Constructors' Championship and 8 points) is associated not only with the post-bankruptcy state, weak engine and lack of clear investments in upgrades. It turns out that it was then that the team simply drowned in the spreadsheet processes!
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In 2017, Arstechnica author Sebastian Anthony visited the team's plant in Enstone to record the effect of digitalization of all technical processes - and found that the car of that year took 77,000 rows in a tabular breakdown by element!
“A mixture of legacy from the old planning system, written to order, a little transformation process, a little manual modifications,” Everest described the spectacle. “Everything was out of date before it was even used.”
Renault solved the problem by partnering with Microsoft - the American IT giant, for the sake of sponsorship stickers, transferred everything itself at its own expense (for example, localized tables in Dynamics 365). But this was a different era—the Redmond-based company urgently needed a beautiful showcase to prove that cloud tools could work effectively as part of their transformation strategy. Now such technologies are standard, and Williams has to cope on his own, with his own money and with his own resources. And the process is only in the middle.
“We now have more structure in our system and processes,” said Vowles. – Now it is based on a digital base. But they're still not good enough. Not even close. And people are not yet fully familiar with the new system.

 

In January, the chassis was still a bag of parts. You can’t work like that; the organization doesn’t need this level of workload. Instead of concentrating on performances, you just think about survival - just to get the car to the track. It is our responsibility to make sure this doesn't happen again. This winter must not be repeated.”
The center of change is cultural. Williams must learn to work again
Vowles’ main goal, after all, is not even changing machines, but restructuring the way of thinking of employees - from reactive to prospective, so that everyone thinks about the future, plans and copes better with the new. After all, otherwise no reduction in details or software updates will save the team in the long term - and people need to understand which approach is better.
“I wanted to stress and overload the system to the absolute limit so that everyone would realize and realize when it started to break, and now it is breaking - one day. This will be the only winter like this.
But cultural change, change of this magnitude, does not happen in an hour, a day, or even a winter. Typically it takes about three years for a thousand people. CTO Pat Fry and I think the same thing - “It will be very straightforward, it will make our lives easier and better, and it will focus on the process.”

 

 

For the rest of us, it feels more like we're locking them in a box like, “This is what you can do, and this is your narrow field of work.” But this is absolutely not true. In fact, everything is much broader - I want everyone to think differently now. I stop you from wasting hours of your life on meaningless things and give back half of that time so you can think of smarter ways to move forward.”
And this journey will make a lot of people uncomfortable. Resistance and even obvious indignation against. But that’s the logical resistance you encounter every time you try to change a culture.”
Technical director Pat Fry's surprise: workers still have to sleep at the plant like they did 20 years ago
Vowles's stories could be written off as attempts to explain in advance the lack of rapid progress in results or a potential rollback from the high seventh position of the Constructors' Championship, even after increased investment and a radical reassembly of the car - if freshly changed from Alpin (due to their reluctance to invest in development, by the way!) another former top engineer of the champion Mercedes did not tell similar stories about the assembly and production of the new car.
They are also stunning.

 

 

“Delays in deliveries forced workers to spend the night on base and literally turn into night shift workers in order to still prepare the parts. If we go back to the approach from about 20 years ago, if a lot of parts were delayed, someone would invariably pull Superman's underpants over his pants, run around and save the day. We still seem to be operating in the same mode, actually.
But the results come from sound planning and optimization of everything possible... I will never allow anyone to bullshit, but the key parts for speed should come out of the factory last due to the search for additional lap time in the wind tunnel, or the necessary extended suspension development. These things need to be done smarter.
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And if a machine is very late in assembly without a good justification in the form of improvements, then this is simply a huge waste of resources and money. This winter, “Williams” worked viciously expensive.
I never did. I don't want to live this again. I'm sure James doesn't want to either. I had to look for ways to produce the car differently. And, I want to say, I would not call them “normal”. Or very effective. We simply harm ourselves in the end - that’s what is meant, such a culture develops.”
The most visible consequences: a completely new bold steering wheel... Broken in the first race
Visible changes were already apparent during the presentation and run-in: firstly, the release of the real car was delayed until the last day before the tests, and at the opening of the season a show car was demonstrated; secondly, the change in technical processes was clearly demonstrated: from a steering wheel that was 10 years out of date without a screen switched to a supercomputer, which has long become an F1 standard.

 

 

 

Moreover, it is now generally the smallest among the entire peloton - triangular in shape, with all possible edges cut off. A symbol of a new approach.
And... It malfunctioned in the very first race - it caused Sargent to crash after a failure with calibrating the brake balance before a turn:

 

 

“Logan had a sudden shift in braking balance that he didn’t give a command for - a steering bug,” Vowles admitted after the race. – This is an electronic problem due to the new design. First, we’ll solve it with a short-term fix, then, I hope, in Australia we’ll fix it completely.”
“And the alarm window closed and blocked everything, it was impossible to make changes, and I couldn’t see anything and couldn’t do anything,” Albon clarified his problem. “It’s a terrible cycle.”
Lack of spare chassis already at the third (!!!) race
The nightmare continued at the Australian Grand Prix, the third stage of the season. When, during the first practice, Alex had a serious accident that damaged the chassis, the chaotic winter with the hellish and complex assembly process took off again!

 

 

Williams did not have the necessary parts to repair the chassis and the third spare chassis itself - all the kits for two cars and the reserve simply did not have time to be produced, assembled and shipped. Exactly what Vowles was talking about in the winter.
They had to send the broken elements to the factory in England and replant Albon on Sargent's chassis - Logan was removed from the remainder of the Australian Grand Prix, and Williams raced the stage with one car.

 

 

Moreover, the extent of the shortage of even theoretically available parts at the plant is such that the next Grand Prix in Japan is on April 5! “Williams still won’t be able to assemble a third spare chassis!” The maximum they can do is restore what was broken in Australia. The situation could easily repeat itself.
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“When, in the conditions of modern Formula 1, a team does not have a spare chassis, this is an unacceptable situation,” Vowles summed up the situation. “However, it reflects how far behind we were over the winter period and illustrates why we need to make significant changes to the team to improve our position going forward.
The last time this happened to me was in 2009 with Brown (after the sudden departure of Honda and the reassembly of the team in the winter - Sports). We were lucky back then; we could easily have lost the title because of one accident.
Unfortunately, now we have to sacrifice something. In our case, this is the third chassis. I'm sure we will have two cars in Japan. I can’t even guarantee this 100% - it depends on the damage and the current capabilities at the base. We still need to prepare updates, somehow combine all this with the processes of continuing to change the technological base.
Unfortunately, this is what happens when people push themselves to their absolute limits and break. That's why we had to feel it. And that's why we should never do that again. This hits us hard.

 

 

Have we had reliability problems in testing and racing because we didn't prepare because we pushed ourselves to the absolute limit? Without a doubt. Did it give you more speed and potential? Yes. Have we delivered more speed and potential with better structure, organization and earlier build? Exactly. It was a necessary pain, it had to be experienced. This should be a catalyst."