Lawrence Stroll, the billionaire father of Lance, has claimed he would not be prepared to financially back a closer working relationship between Williams and Mercedes.
The fashion mogul is well-known for the large backing he offers those who take on his 19-year-old son, with some putting a figure of around $70m as the amount he gave last year to get the former European F3 champion his seat.
This season, however, the Grove-based team is floundering at the back of the grid and sits bottom of the Constructors’ Championship, despite Stroll scoring their first points of 2018 this past weekend in Baku.
That has led Lawrence to ponder the possibility of a Ferrari/ Haas style partnership between Williams and their engine supplier Mercedes.
“I tried to persuade [the team] to go down that route, but I’m not going to be buying anything from [Mercedes motorsport boss] Toto [Wolff],” he was quoted by PlanetF1 as saying on Friday.
Though the Brackley-based team has admitted they would be open to the concept of what many have dubbed a ‘B-team’, deputy team boss Claire Williams also shut down the idea.
“The model that Haas have, the model that Force India have to a lesser degree, is not something that we subscribe to at Williams. We certainly haven’t in the past.
“We feel we are a whole constructor, a holistic constructor. We’re very proud of the fact that we design, build and develop our race cars fully in-house. Very, very little is out-sourced.”
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She also strongly rejected the possibility that Williams could eventually go the way of other once great teams that were forced out.
“If people think we don’t have a plan and we are going the way of Tyrrell, they will be sorely mistaken,” he told the Formula 1 website. “That will be over my dead body.”
