Rubens Barrichello: Paydriver were cardinal errors of the Williams team

(Motorsport-Entire.com) – Rubens Barrichello has criticized Williams for his driver choice in recent years and sees wrong decisions as an important reason why the crew has crashed in recent years. The Brazilian had ended his career 2011 with the crew, since then it has been running for the racing team more bad as right – apart from a small high phase.

“Unfortunately, there has been a lot of us money in the past ten years,” says Barrichello in the podcast 'Rusty's Storage' . “Instead of paying a driver for it, they thought it was a good idea to get some money to survive.” But if you look at where Williams currently stands, “you can see that they made the wrong decisions back then.”

Apart from the successful time with Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa, the traditional racing team struggled in the past few years around the connection. Drivers like Pastor Maldonado with the state oil millions from Venezuela or Bruno Senna brought money with them, but hardly any sporting added value.

Lance Stroll or Sergei Sirotkin also recently made some money in the team box office, were able to do sport but not convince. In addition, according to Barrichello, they had another flaw: Both are young and inexperienced, just like 2020 George Russell and Nicholas Latifi. One of them is a rookie, the other has the experience of a single Formula 1 season.

If it is up to the veteran, he would always hire an experienced pilot for the further development of the car. “Two young drivers can do the job in terms of Traipse,” says Barrichello, but given the limited testing options, it takes someone to make decisions.

“That's where the exclaim comes from. Then you just go about it Telemetry, and that can't always give you the answer, “he says. “The driver gives the right answer.” And that's not just one, but 100.

There are many factors to consider when testing, and Barrichello has doubts whether young drivers understand everything. “Two young drivers then say that the car is slower,” he explains. “Sometimes it's slower, but the better car. That drives teams in the wrong direction.”

By car from 2011 Barrichello was only able to get four points in his last season, but he had more at the time for 2012 worked. That got points in the following season 76 and a surprising victory with Pastor Maldonado. “It was difficult not to sit in this car – especially when you won the Huge Prix in Barcelona,” admits Barrichello.