But you don't see any of those other teams using an experienced driver, and they're all doing better. So Williams' issue would seem to be that it is independent and not in the same bed as another team/manufacturer. If that is indeed their issue, then Rubens, or any other decent, experienced driver, would not seem to be a help in any way.
"Caterham" have 2 experienced drivers as they are a completely new team and need them in order to say if they're going in the right direction or not. Williams have been around long enough to know if they're going the right way about it without needing an experienced driver to confirm or deny it.
They just seem to have a slow car, so in my opinion they need 2 young drivers to get it further up the grid in order to get noticed more.
Minardi were never good enough to get bad.
Sure you do - have we forgotten already who has driven at each of these teams?
None of them have pure-rookie line-ups, the only one that is closest to that is Sauber with Perez and Kobayashi, but even there they've got one driver who has a season's worth of experience.
But Sutil certainly counts as "experienced". As does Heidfeld and Buemi. And before that we had De La Rosa, Kubica, Liuzzi, Fisichella and Bourdais at these teams.
Its interesting that ever since the start of the season, Sauber have fallen backwards. Perhaps their inexperienced driver line-up isn't proving good for developing the car? Who knows is the answer really but it probably doesn't help. Likewise can be said in an opposite argument for Renault though - Heidfeld's experience hasn't really done anything for them.
What I'm really saying is that I don't see the problem at Williams being the driver line-up. That has never been a problem at Williams. So I don't see any reason to fire/not renew Barrichello beyond money reasons. His results have been good enough to keep him. I certainly don't see it as being a great help for Williams to waste half of 2012 getting a rookie trained up again and currently they aren't producing good enough cars to hold onto any "future talents" that they manage to get in the seats. They've lost Rosberg and Hulkenburg, if they get van de Garde or a "real deal" like Grosjean or Vergne, how long before they too leave for better teams? Its not really helpful at all.
No, the last thing Williams need to worry about is trying to get the next WDC rookie in their cars.
And Minardi were a good team. No, they didn't win races or championships but they were a solid team in the late-80s and early 90s. People like to joke about them but they weren't "bad". Minardi were actually better than today's HRT though thats not to put HRT down as they are still a reasonably professional team compared to some from the past.
Anyway, I wasn't referring to a decline so much with them, more that they became stuck at the back constantly changing out drivers chasing the money to develop the car with the occasional hot shot rookie put in 1 seat who then left for a better team.
Williams should get the hot shot rookies but they need to keep them, not lose them to other teams. But it currently looks like they are becoming stuck in a Minardi zone.
I don't even see the relevance of how old Williams is with regards to knowing how to develop a good car. It seems to me they haven't known how to develop a good car ever since Newey left. Suggests to me that any experienced, race-winning driver they can get their hands on would be hugely helpful to sort out their 12+ year stint of aerodynamic deficiency.
Ironically (for this debate), Lotus have more staff with aerodynamic past success than Williams as they mostly come from Renault, Toyota, Red Bull and BAR/Honda. Although Williams do now have Coughlan - it remains to be seen how effective he will be.
But this is all silly presumptions as we can't really judge and value the strength of a team like that. Its difficult to say how much direction a driver can really give in car design and the organisation of a team. Just as its difficult to say how effective the various staff are at each team and where its all going wrong. But one thing is for sure, Williams have not had the aerodynamics sorted for a long, long time and this is where I put the blame for their lack of success. Not Cosworth, not BMW, not Michelin or Montoya or Ralf or whoever. Changing the driver line-up isn't going to change the team's fortunes. Neither is switching to Renault power.
I finally see it. I think Williams needs a car that doesn't run as slow as the new three teams. Drivers are important but they can only perform as good as the tool given to them. We saw how good Rubens was last year, and hell the car was fast enough to get on pole with Hulkenburg. Then you have this years car that is like leaf fallen from the tree of the FW32. It's not the drivers who are crap and Williams, they just tried to be too radical and it blew up on them and still is.
Just a poor attempt at a joke/dig at Raikkonen fans.
