Pat Fry Happy At Williams Without Kind Of Restrictions He Faced In Alpine

Wednesday, 17 January 2024 at 06:00

Williams's chief technical officer, Pat Fry, compared the elements of his current team to his previous one - Alpine, in a recent interview.

Pat Fry left the Alpine in the middle of the 2023 season, along with a few other key team members, and found a place in Williams Racing.

The small team has been struggling at the back of the grid for quite a long time, but with new team principal James Vowles, a sensational driver like Alex Albon, and the new chief technical officer, the team plans to get back to the top.

After spending a few months with the British team, Par Fry reflected on the situation by comparing it to his previous workplace. As quoted by the official F1 website, he said:

"Some things are better than where I’ve been, and there are some things, well, quite a few things, that we need to fix and understand. But it is all about trying to build up those first impressions and then trying to set an overall target for the team."

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The 59-year-old lately admitted Williams is 15-20 years behind where it should be in some aspects. On the other hand, he said:

"Things that were restricting us at Alpine are not a problem here. The board are behind us. They want to invest. They want to do all the right things. So the opportunity is there. We will make another step next year, but my eye is on the longer-term things."

Williams has been focusing on the 2024 car ever since the beginning of the 2023 season, so Fry most probably did not have too much influence on the development direction of this year's car.

However, the chief technical officer identified the year 2026 as the next great opportunity for Williams as F1 will enter new regulations, which will reset the progress of every single team. He added:

"Every time there is a big regulation change, it’s a good opportunity. Clearly the tools and methodologies we have are nowhere near as good as the top teams but it’s something to work on and we can make sure we get as much as we can in place for when we start doing that."