Williams used Excel to create the car

A year ago, James Vowles took over the reins of the Williams team and immediately began restructuring the team’s work processes. The British specialist said that the development and modernization of the car had been hampered in the past by the fact that engineers did not have to use modern specialized software, but Excel tables to take into account about 20,000 individual components and parts that make up a Formula 1. car.

James Vowles: “The Excel table seemed like a joke to me: it was impossible to navigate and update. Let’s take the front wing as an example. It consists of four hundred individual components. And when we say we need one front wing, we mean it needs to be composed of a large number of metal and carbon components.

To do this, you must log into the system and order the installation of the wing. When you need to keep track of hundreds of thousands of components moving around an assembly base, an Excel spreadsheet becomes useless.

We need to understand where each of these individual components is located, how long it will take to be manufactured, how long it will take to pass quality control. If there are any issues with the verification, should you run it again?

Once we reach the level of complexity that modern Formula 1 is at, the Excel table collapses. And we were in a similar situation. Our processes are now more systematic and structured, but still not nearly as good as they should be.”