FÓRMULA-1

Villeneuve predicts Williams will end

Formerly a pupil of Frank Williams at the time of the Grove team's heyday, Jacques Villeneuve today is one of his greatest critics. The year was 1997; that sunny Sunday in Jerez (Spain), the Canadian rider was second on the grid behind Schumacker - during the disputed and decisive race of the championship to Williams that had a superior car of the Ferrari approaches to Schumi that was the leader of the race, at a certain point in the race Villleneuve tries the inevitable overtaking and the smart Schumacker tries to get him out of the race by throwing his Ferrari over the Canadian who cleverly manages to stay in the race and even with the broken car becomes the world champion of 97 ... Williams at that time was like Hamilton's Mercedes today-was the best team of that year and came from a performance ancestry.Today the team's current moment is delicate, a series of problems haunt Williams-but what worries the top of the English team now is the financial situation.Last year Villeneuve gave a controversial interview to the Swiss magazine 'Blick' which said that the team was no longer competitive due to the fact that the team had been 'sold' to the paying drivers - according to Villeneuve the decay began when the team went on to overvalue Lance Stroll by giving him a kind of carte blanche within the team-this is due to the fact that Stroll's multimillion-dollar family injected millions of dollars into Williams, and from there a process of continuous decay began.Now things have complicated once and for all with Stroll's departure for Force India and the loss of a major sponsor-the Martini-it is a fact that Williams has lost two important sources of money. The team now runs after positive results to at least mitigate the failure that was the season this year. Another setback is Kubica's possible departure from the team - it's worth remembering that the Polish driver is being probed by other teams.In another recent interview Villeneuve said Stroll and Martini's exit was a nail in the Wiiliams coffin.


Kelvin James
Twitter:@mundo4_rodas