Lawrence Stroll missed opportunity claim as ‘enormous sadness’ lingers for former F1 boss

Former Williams deputy team principal Claire Williams has admitted it “drives me nuts” that Lawrence Stroll slipped through the team’s fingers to rejuvenate F1 rivals Aston Martin.

Stroll’s son and current Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll made his F1 debut with Williams as an 18-year-old in 2017, registering a podium finish in Azerbaijan and starting on the front row at Monza in his first season.

Lawrence Stroll’s Aston Martin impact a frustration for Claire Williams

With Williams suffering a disastrous 2018 season, however, the Canadian billionaire switched his allegiance to Silverstone, rescuing the Force India team from administration, with his son following for 2019.

Mr Stroll has since overseen a dramatic transformation of the former Jordan outfit, rebranding the team as Aston Martin ahead of the 2021 season and opening a new state-of-the-art factory last year.

Aston Martin also have a works partnership in place with Honda, engine suppliers to current World Champions Red Bull, for the F1 2026 regulation changes, with the team announcing the signing of Formula 1 design guru Adrian Newey last month.

Meanwhile, the Williams family exited F1 during the pandemic-affected 2020 season after selling the team to Dorilton Capital.

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Appearing on the Business of Sport podcast, Ms Williams conceded that her regime “just ran out of money” prior to the sale of the team following a legal dispute with title sponsor ROKiT.

And she admitted to frustration that Stroll has since gone on to revitalise a rival team, having been an influential figure at Williams across 2017/18.

She said: “It drives me nuts because Lawrence was with us. We just ran out of money, not to put too fine a point on it.”

In an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com earlier this year, Williams pinpointed the start of 2018 as the moment “things started getting bad” for the team having struggled to find the budget to develop a car for the new season, with Stroll’s purchase of Force India was confirmed that August.

She said: “Around the beginning of Q2 of 2017, I think we were starting to feel like the other teams were really catching up.

“I can’t remember at that point where we would have been in the Constructors’ Championship, but things were starting to feel like they were on the decline.

“We were obviously concerned, I think, at that point, and thinking: ‘What on earth do we need to do? We’ve got to propel ourselves back, the plan is not to go down.’

“The plan was always to keep going up. Certainly, in 2014 and ’15, we were thinking to ourselves: ‘Why can’t we be fighting for second next year in the championship?’

“Obviously, we then started to take a bit of a downward turn. As we went through 2017, we saw quite how much other teams were spending, particularly at the top of the grid and into the midfield.

“Costs were escalating and the technical regulations were incredibly difficult. We needed to, as any team does, spend our way out of it, but we didn’t have the budget to do that.

“Then going into 2018, producing the car, we didn’t have the budget, and things just started getting bad from there.”

Williams’ problems mounted entering the 2020 season after a dispute with title sponsor ROKiT, with the team awarded more than $32 million following a court case in the United States.

Williams admitted the team were left wondering how they would “keep the lights on” in the first quarter of 2020 before the global pandemic proved “the final straw.”

She explained: “It was probably the tail end of 2019 when we were having trouble with our title partner and the payments.

“It was at that point, when we weren’t getting the payment for Q1 2020 that I was going: ‘Oh my God, we don’t have that money. How do we keep the lights on?’

“It was that tight, I think what a lot of people didn’t realise about that time behind the scenes at Williams was how difficult it was just keeping the lights on.

“F1 was incredibly difficult at the time. The bigger teams were spending huge amounts of money, more than we were able to spend or generate through sponsorship.

“Our prize fund money was almost halved because of the structure of the prize pot and we were in 10th.

“Sponsorship just wasn’t there, the Drive to Survive phenomenon that has exploded the sport was not there yet – sponsorship just was so hard to come by, not just for us but for every team.

“It was a really difficult operating environment, coupled with the fact that we weren’t getting it right made life really difficult. Just surviving at that point was an achievement.

“When we started having trouble with our title partner, it was like: ‘This is not what we need right now, at all.’

“But we were able to plug that gap. We found the money elsewhere, someone very kindly bailed us out and that kept us going.

“But then COVID-19 happened and that was the final straw.

“Mike O’Driscoll, my CEO, who I ran the team with – he is just the most brilliant human – he had the conversation with me that enough was enough and we had no other option but to try and find a buyer for the team.”

Williams, who feels the family would still own the team today had the 2021 cost cap being introduced two years earlier, admitted it has been “really tough” to adjust to life after F1.

“I don’t watch every race,” she said. “Not being a part of that world is clearly going to be an enormous sadness to me.

“I’m not running Williams, so staying away from it is probably the healthiest thing for me to do.”

“If I’m honest, it has been really tough. Williams has been my life and one minute, it’s there, and one minute, it’s not.

“Those race cars felt like a part of me. The team felt like an extension of my family and they’re not there anymore. I don’t get to see them each and every day.

“That has been really difficult to get used to.

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