Mark Gillan: A very disappointing season for Williams

Mark Gillan has been the most visible of Williams F1’s new technical management team since his first race in Singapore, with fellow new boys Mike Coughlan and Jason Somerville firmly ensconced in the Grove factory while Mark directed the on-track action over the season’s closing stages.

He holds the title of Chief Operations Engineer which he describes as being: “technically responsible for the running of the car - the whole technical operation at trackside in relation to the car falls to me.” It’s a wide-ranging role but one that the Northern Irishman is well prepared for, having held senior roles at McLaren, Jaguar, Red Bull and Toyota, as well as having a Professorship at the University of Surrey which encompassed the SAVAG research group which is now extremely successful in the fields of aerodynamics, lean engineering, tyres, vehicle dynamic modelling, model predictive control and hybrid and electric vehicles development.

Catching up with Mark not long after he returned to the UK following the final race in Brazil, he was up front about the team’s showing this season. “It’s fair to say that 2011 was a very disappointing season for Williams,” he began. “We didn’t achieve the goals that we set out to - as a team we had high hopes going into winter testing, and we’d taken fundamental design decisions based around aerodynamic concepts which, on reflection, were not the right way forward. To finish ninth with five points is not where we want to be.

“Aerodynamically the car was weak relative to the competition, so we didn’t have enough efficient downforce and the general aerodynamic balance characteristic was probably not as good as the competition,” he added. “This meant that in terms of tyre wear and a few other areas we suffered more than others, both across one-lap qualifying and overall race pace.”

Mark only worked directly with drivers Rubens Barrichello and Pastor Maldonado from Singapore onwards, but he feels that both drivers acquitted themselves well in trying circumstances. “Having started in September, I can only concentrate on what they did in the last six races, but I was very impressed with the professionalism of both drivers,” said Mark. “They pushed hard with what was a difficult car to drive which put them in tough positions on the grid, but they kept their heads down in the races, put in consistent laps throughout and overall, both of them did a very good job.”

Both drivers had to get used to using performance enhancements such as DRS and KERS, as well as learning to manage Pirelli’s fasterwearing tyres this season. Mark assessed each factor in respect of the racing in 2011.

“From a technical perspective KERS and DRS opened up overtaking opportunities and the team has worked very hard to optimise both those technologies,” he said. “The importance of KERS will increase in the coming years, with the amount of energy that can be used by the driver set to increase from 2014, so it is a technology that is here to stay. With Pirelli, given they are in their first year they have done an excellent job. Going forward to next year they will put into practice what has been learned this year in terms of tyre compounds and their effect on the races but it has been a positive step on all three fronts.”

Mark’s role is to oversee the cars’ operation at the track – so what are the factors that make his role easier? “As a base you need a consistent and reliable car – ideally it will also be fast – but that minimises the work that needs to be done to the cars at an event,” he revealed. “You need a team of mechanics and a support group that know what they’re doing, and a good integration with the engine and drivetrain people. With the travelling engineers you want a good, knowledgeable set of people who have ideally come up through the ranks and understand the job in detail, and someone at the top to manage it to ensure it runs smoothly. With limited track running it actually makes the job a little easier to manage, back in the days when we had three cars and running was all day on Friday it was much more difficult.”

As a member of the senior management team, Mark is part of a focused group which is bringing new ideas and practices to bear on the team to ensure a better future performance on track.

“With the new management team coming online from September, there is a new questioning of the car and its development, but it was fair to say that some of the problems we had were almost embedded in the car’s DNA, which made them difficult to deal with during the season when there is no testing. The important thing is not to make the same mistakes going into 2012 and beyond.

“I’ve known Jason Somerville for quite a while and although I’ve never worked with Mike before we almost crossed paths at McLaren in the past,” he added. “The relationship between us has been excellent – whenever I’m in the factory the three of us meet daily for an hour and discuss in depth the design and development decisions. We’ve introduced various metrics to measure how things are progressing and that is carried out in conjunction with our Chief Designer Ed Wood, and it’s a process which the four of us manage on a daily basis. It looks not only at the design side but at race performance, aero development and all other areas of the car.

“The FW33 has had some inherent weaknesses and the main thing is to ensure those don’t carry forward into the FW34, so what we’ve been doing in the last few months is testing at various events, and especially at the Young Driver Test in Abu Dhabi, ideas and concepts for the FW34 and to ‘design out’ the problems of the FW33 so they don’t reoccur next year.”