With a contract in hand, Lance Stroll will be sticking with Williams for the 2018 season, but the other seat at the team is still up for the taking. There are five main drivers in contention for the seat: Paul di Resta, Robert Kubica, Daniil Kvyat, Felipe Massa and Pascal Wehrlein. Of these drivers, which one should Williams pick?
To decide which driver is best suited for the seat, we need to analyze their options. So, let’s look at the recent performance and future performance of these drivers.
Paul di Resta had a pretty good career with Force India spanning three seasons, allowing him to rack up 121 points. He consistently finished in the points or close to the points, which was on par with Force India’s performance at the time. He did manage to narrowly outperform teammate Adrian Sutil in his final season, although he appeared to be slightly more consistent than his teammate.
However, his recent but brief Formula One return with Williams showed that he likely isn’t a good fit for the team. He performance when filling in for Felipe Massa was subpar. In qualifying, he qualified near the back of the grid, not to say that Lance Stroll did much better in the same car. But he wasn’t really anything special to watch during the race and wasn’t quite on the same pace as the others. It’s understandable that after more than three years out of the driver’s seat you’ll be a little rusty, but that is the reason that Williams shouldn’t pick him.
They already have an inexperienced driver: Stroll. They can’t afford to wait around for di Resta to find the performance in the car and shake off the rust. They don’t need a driver that spectacular, but they need someone that can drive the car with little or no adjustment period.
There has been a lot of media attention surrounding Robert Kubica and a potential Formula One return. He has a strong career with BMW Sauber over a decade ago. He spent multiple years with the outfit, scoring the team’s first and only race victory. He transitioned to Renault in 2010, where he also performed well and was on route to have a strong career with them. However, a nearly fatal rally accident forced him to withdraw from Formula One and never return.
However, in the recent months he has performed some tests with Renault and Williams. The tests yielded good results and makes it appear there is a strong possibility that Kubica is well enough to return to the Formula One grid.
However, Kubica is in the same boat as di Resta, in that he has been out of Formula One for seven years. There is going to be a big adjustment period, as he learns the new cars. The team also must think about how long his career can last. At the age of 32, he isn’t doing puzzles and complaining about kids playing on his lawn just yet, but he’s not exactly as young as the other new faces to the grid. He also has a permanent injury from his rally accident, so it’s possible that he may not even be able to race the duration of a season without triggering pain or further injury of some kind.
The media would like to see him back in Formula One, but he isn’t really a viable option for Williams.
Daniil Kvyat hasn’t been on the driver market very long, but already he has been linked to the Williams seat by many sources. He has spent his career with Toro Rosso, having been given the chance to advance to Red Bull, but then blowing it in his second season with the team and being thrown back to the junior team, where he has declined ever since.
I’ve said in the past that Kvyat looked like a promising driver for Red Bull, but his performance just isn’t what it used to be. He has been on a steady downhill spiral ever since returning to Toro Rosso and he wasn’t able to match his teammate Carlos Sainz in the same car, despite Toro Rosso showing some pretty good pace this season.
Toro Rosso has dumped Kvyat from their programme recently to take on Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley for 2018. I don’t think that Kvyat has earned a spot at Williams, based on his recent performance. Some would argue that Kvyat’s driving style doesn’t fit with the team either, but this is the team that brought in Pascal Maldonado, so that doesn’t really matter.
So how about the team’s current driver, Felipe Massa? He started Formula One 15 years ago with Sauber, eventually advancing to a successful career with Ferrari before signing with Williams in 2014. He has built a strong relationship with the team over the years and even postponed his retirement to help Williams out of a bind when they lost Valtteri Bottas to Mercedes at the start of the season.
Massa’s performance has stayed consistent throughout the years and he still manages to pick up a couple of points at the races, even this season. He is no longer outperforming Lance Stroll, who everyone said was a bad driver at the start of the season, but he is still competitive.
His main problem is his retirement. He has spent lots of time in Formula One, but it’s time for him to finally retire, as he was supposed to at the end of 2016.
Having read my analysis of the other drivers, I’m sure that you now know Pascal Wehrlein is the driver who I would most like to see with a seat at Williams and the driver that I think most deserves it. He started his career last season with Manor, having received backing by Mercedes. When Manor collapsed at the end of the season, he found his way to Sauber. Sauber has no official contracts for the 2018 driver lineup yet, so it’s possible that Wehrlein could be with the team again, but it’s more likely that they will use a Marcus Ericsson and Charles Leclerc lineup next season.
Many would argue that Wehrlein’s performance has been nothing impressive, which is true, but there are a couple issues with evaluating his performance. Firstly, he has never been on a good team. The Manor was the slowest car on the grid and, as much as I love Sauber, their car isn’t that hot either. And another big issue is that Sauber has a nasty history of favouring Ericsson. When the few resources that the team has are thrown towards Ericsson, it’s hard for Wehrlein to get noticed.
We must remember that Wehrlein has scored points on two occasions this season, while Ericsson hasn’t. He also consistently outperforms Ericsson. I would most like to see him in a good car next season to see what he is capable of, rather than having another potentially good driver flushed out of the system before getting a proper chance. He is also a current driver, which means the least amount of learning at the start of the season compared to the other drivers in line for the seat.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
