Michael: Cosworth will do a good job

Sunday 8th November 2009

Sam Michael is confident Cosworth will "do a good job" for Williams next season.

Cosworth supplied the Grove-based outfit engines during 2006, but the team didn't have the best of seasons and they decided to use Toyota as their engine supplier the following year.

Technical director Michael, though, believes things will be different in 2010, especially with the field so close.

"We won't know that until we get it on the track," he told Autosport. "Our target is always to be at the front and with the grid being so tight now it's even more realistic to have that as a target as the regulations have closed everything up so much.

"Finding one or two tenths from aerodynamic or some other gain can put you in with a shout of winning races. That's why there have been so many winners this year. Cosworth are going to do a good job."

Michael also played down suggestions that all the DNF's in 2006 was down to the engine manufacturer.

"Engineering is at the forefront of everything they do and that was a big attraction," he said. "The reliability of their original engine should achieve pretty good levels with the current rules because it was an engine that was designed to much higher revs back in 2006.

"Now the limit is 18,000rpm so you have a very robust basis for an engine. Those were a couple of areas that we thought were quite strong. If you look a back to 2006, it was one of our most unreliable years, but one of the things that was clear to us internally was that there was only one DNF from an engine failure.

"There were other engine-related failures but that was because of packaging and other areas of the car that we didn't have time to optimise because it was such a late decision. Cosworth have got a lot of work to do over winter to consolidate and make sure that that reliability is realised for the start of next year."

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