Sale Williams is not specifically related to coronavirus

Big news this morning when it became known that Williams had terminated the sponsorship agreement with ROKiT. The team would be put on sale at the risk of the iconic name disappearing from the sport. What the future looks like for the legendary team now is cloudy, but the primary motivation to do this is to keep Williams as a team alive.

Change of name

If Williams is sold, the new owner would have the opportunity to change the name. It is still too early to say exactly what will happen, but Claire Williams hopes that the name will be retained, according to Race fans. "It’s too early probably to hypothesise on what the team could and couldn’t be called. I think the Williams family would certainly always like to see the Williams name in Formula 1."

The sale is also certainly not with the intention to disappear from the sport as a family or an existing team. Williams: "It certainly doesn’t mean that this team won’t continue to race for many years to come. This for us is about securing the future of our team and making sure that we have a successful future to the generation of inward investment."

Coronavirus

Sales can logically be linked to the coronavirus that has a financial impact on each team. Yet that is not one of the driving factors, says Williams. "There’s no one key factor that’s driven this decision. We’ve obviously taken steps over the past many months in order to ensure that we put Williams in the best possible position financially and therefore competitively, and it’s a further step in this process."

"No one key factor can be attributable to this. There’s a number of factors that has led us to this decision." In doing so, the team is taking a step it never wanted to take before. But this decision is now based on the philosophy that the business and the people are on one. "What Frank has always done is to ensure that he puts the team, the business and our people first. And that’s what we’re doing now."

"Equally, Frank always wants to be as competitive as possible. And one of the main reasons that we’re doing this is to attract inward investment into the team in order that we can firstly capitalise on the new regulations that are coming forward in 2021 and put this team in the best possible position to be successful. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters to us."