Williams’ Chief Designer leaves team

Ed Wood has left his role as chief designer at Williams for personal reasons ahead of this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona…

It ends a 12-year working relationship, with Wood having previously been employed at Ferrari and Renault before joining Williams in 2006.

Williams’ technical department has undergone tweaks in recent times with Paddy Lowe joining as Chief Technical Officer from Mercedes and Dirk de Beer coming on board from Ferrari as Head of Aerodynamics.

Then in February, they appointed Doug McKiernan, who worked at McLaren for 16 years from 1999, as Chief Engineer, reporting to Lowe.

“We can confirm that Ed Wood has decided to leave Williams for personal reasons,” read a statement from Williams.

“As Chief Designer, Ed has been instrumental in many successes during his time with the team, including the FW36 and FW37 cars which secured third place in the Constructors’ Championship in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

“The team would like to express its gratitude to Ed for his hard work over the past 12 years; his experience, skill and passion for engineering has been a huge asset to Williams.”

Williams have had a challenging start to the season. After four races, they have accumulated just four points and lie bottom of the constructors’ championship table.

At this point last year, Williams had more than four times that tally with 18 points to sit fifth overall.