Caubet hails Williams ‘spirit’

Renault Sport F1 boss Jean-Francois Caubet has congratulated Frank Williams on the team’s win in Barcelona and said that the spirit between the two companies is the same as it was during the glory days of the teams’ previous relationship in the 1990s.

Pastor Maldonado’s win at the Spanish Grand Prix was Williams’ first since 2004 and the first with Renault as partner since Jacques Villeneuve won the Luxembourg Grand Prix of 1997 but Caubet confessed that the working relationship between the race team and engine supplier had picked up where it left off.

“It was quite emotional in Renault to have this win in Barcelona,” he said. “I think we found the same spirit with Frank. We’re quite happy as we pushed a lot to have a good relationship and a good spirit with all the teams and with Frank we’ve found the same spirit as we had 20 years ago.

“It was quite funny because Frank visited us last week and he told us in French… I will try to translate: Une hirondelle ne fait pas printemps, I think it’s one swallow doesn’t make a summer in English or something like this. But I don’t think it’s right. I think the car is good and I think they’ll probably have some more wins with Frank.”

Williams admitted the Barcelona win had taken him by surprise and also that the gap between wins had become too large. “I was surprised. I’ve been racing long enough to know that you should approach any race with a considerable amount of pessimism and you get better after that, “ he said.

“All grand prix teams are immensely professional and very few of them make any mistakes worth talking about during a season so it’s hard to prise winners away from winning all the time. But whatever we did right, and I don’t really know what that was, worked very fine and I’m just delighted to walk away with all those points and another number one on the scoreboard. It was an embarrassing amount of time for a man with a big ego.