Mark Gillan, the Chief Operations Engineer at Williams F1, is leaving the team after just one season. Gillan is a topline academic in addition to being a racing engineer and has popped in and out of F1 throughout his career. He started out as a lecturer in Aeronautical Department at Queen’s University in Belfast and then in 1998 was lured to work at McLaren. He later moved to Jaguar Racing where he was Head of Vehicle Performance but left the team in 2005 to take up a Professorship at the University of Surrey, taking the Sir George Edwards Chair in Aerospace Engineering and Director of Surrey’s Advanced Vehicle Analysis Group (SAVAG). He was then recruited by Toyota to be its head of aerodynamics, but later set up his own consultancy business, while returning to the University of Surrey as Professor of Vehicle Engineering. He was lured to Willliams a year ago in September, but wants to spend more time at home. It remains to be seen what the team will do to replace him, but there is little doubt that his departure is a loss.
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joeblogsf1 
The team was quoted saying gillan wanted to ‘spend more time with his family’.
It’s such a hackneyed phrase I cannot believe it was said without extreme irony.
The williams corporate video on sky f1 goes on about the sacrifices needed to make it in F1, including time spent away from the family; wolff makes quite a deal of it.
Whatever. It always strikes me as really being about men who cannot live up to their responsibilities. People shouldn’t forget who is really making the sacrifice in this ‘total war’.
People’s family situations change.
Maybe he came back to F1 on the condition that he’d discuss it with the wife and kids at the end of the first full season and the response was “please stay at home Daddy”.
Maybe someone in the family has an illness and needs more care – it’d be none of our business to know the details.
There was a touching anecdote in Jake Humphrey’s last blog as the Beeb’s F1 presenter mentioning his wife Harriet:
F1 is simultaneously a passion, a sport and a job. I’m not trite enough to say “family comes first”, each person sets their own priorities and sometimes those priorities change.
I’m sure you can find people in F1 or ex-F1 who regret staying in it as long as they did – and people ex-F1 who regret quitting when they did too.
P.S. Who are you referring to with your “who is really making the sacrifice” bit?
Jem, 100 times what you said. I was once on the other end of that.
Wasnt Gillan one of the star hirings by Adam Parr? I wonder if its a coincidence that the initiatives he put in motion (Gillan, the Jag hybrid etc) are being scrapped following his departure. The team was in a spiral of decline whilst he was there and has picked up since he left. About time too!
You have it all back to front. The team was reviving. That was Parr’s work. What happens from now on is not his work.
Huh? I don’t get it. Parr said the team was in decline whilst he was there
The team was in decline when he arrived. His job was to improve it. He did.
So do I detect that you believe Williams will fall back again now Parr and Gillan are gone? I thought the revival was mainly due to the use of Renault engines but what do I know.
No, I do not mean to imply that at all. Mike Coughlan is a very capable engineer and should take much of the credit for putting the team on the right path. It was the technical management that was amiss, not necessarily the people. I expect him to produce a car that is better next year and with Bottas there is a driver who can use it all the time.
Read Adam Parr’s book last night, it makes very interesting reading, even more so with events like Gillan leaving
What I think Parr said is that Williams was in decline for the entire time he was there. Thats very different. He certainly didnt improve it because in his last full year it nearly failed to finish the season. I think Parr admits that too
Not at all. I think he is quite proud of what the team did. I don’t know who or what you are reading, but it does not sound right. Perhaps Adam will make a comment here to clarify.
i really don’t understand what you mean here. It’s not me saying this it is Parr! HE said that Williams was in decline whilst he was there and whos going to argue with him when you look at how badly they did last year? Im not even sure why you would bother challenging it. Parr also said that he was deeply worried about whether Williams would finish the 2011 season and that in itself shows how low they had sunk. Its in black and white in comments from Parr so why are you trying to deny it?
There is obviously some lack of understanding going on. Williams WAS in decline. Parr began the process of turning it around. End of story. He is hardly going to say it is decline because of what I have been doing, is he?
Four years into his job at Williams Parr admitted that the situation was so bad that he was worried about whether the team would get to finish the 2011 season and did not know if it would be able to race in Abu Dhabi. What more do you need to know?!? If this isn’t an admission of defeat then I don’t know what is. It was only five months before he left Williams so what was the achievement exactly?
This is in black and white from Parrs mouth so why are you even disputing it? He also admitted that Williams entered a 15 year decline after Adrian Neweys’s exit and this covers most of Parr’s time at the team. QED.
Adam set out with a plan to turn Williams around. He built up new business, he built s transparent and corporate structure and he then floated the team. There were moments when he might have felt that things were not going well, but his strategy was always to stop the decline. If not, what was he doing there? It was necessary to make some tough decisions to stop the decline, and he did that. He changed the engine supply. He replaced the technical management, which was essential to change the approach.
The last time we had a lengthy conversation was in Australia, just before he left, when he said that he wanted to be judged on the performances in 2012 because that was HIS package. He admitted that there had had to be compromises because the team could not afford to run paid drivers, but he felt that the drivers chosen were the best available in the circumstances. That was an assessment of a rational and intelligent man. The team was clearly not in decline at that point because it won a race a few weeks later. Nor is it in decline now because it has hired Valtteri Bottas on the grounds that he is a top line driver NOT on the basis that he has more money than other choices. Thus the fact that he wrote about 2011 saying he was worried that the team was in decline is not something that can be applied to 2012 when he had taken steps to arrest that decline.
What’s your source?
So wait a moment. Parr spent five years running Williams and at the end of his fifth year it gets into such a bad situation that he admits he is deeply worried that it will not be able to finish the season, yet you think he stopped the decline??? He admits Williams had been in decline for 15 years from 1997 so you can defend him all you want but he disagrees. Williams is in really good shape now so it has gone from decline to success but that cannot change the fact that under Parr it was a period of decline and he even admits it
Obviously you know best.
Try having kids. When the family’s at home and you know you’re not, it sucks.
Personally I can’t stand going away for a night on business, let alone being away for weeks.
Not everyone wants to partake of the “total war” forever.
It’s not war, it’s not sending folks to the moon or curing cancer, AIDS or Alzheimers.
It’s only a game.
I don’t know Mark Gillan, but he has a reputation (from mutual friends) of being a highly intelligent and sensible guy, perhaps with a sense of proportion. And a sense of proportion is not something that helps one stay in F1 (though Joe often displays an alarmingly good sense of the wider world, which makes me admire his ability to stay with the circus this long).
I suppose sometimes the “spend more time with his family” cliche actually has to be true, to make up for all the times it’s used as a crap excuse.
I remember a few years ago some Labour cabinet minister or other resigning for that reason, and the PR people were saying “No, really, this time that really IS why the guy’s going, honest…”
“Total war”?
Oh grow up, it’s motorsport.
I think the ‘total war’ was meant ironically and that who is making the sacrifice was meaning the family.
Oh right. Irony (etc) doesn’t often translate well on the web.
Seems like he likes to be in and out of F1 all the time.
This seems odd as right before Autosport broke this it just ran a story quoting Gillan on the challenge of 2014 and it didn’t sound like he was planning to leave.
Has he upset Bernie?
Sid he travel with the team or was it a job at the design centre/production base?
The amount of travelling in F1 is well known to be a killer, for those who do not thrive on it.
You are reading too much into this.
Haven’t heard anything, but my guess is that Prof Gillan will probably re-emerge at Surrey at SAVAG. As far as I know, he was a visiting Prof at Surrey even whilst he was at Williams.
This seems to be a blow to Williams but it’s probably worth thinking also about the wider perspective; Gillan, who is clearly more than just highly competent and who has had a very swift and effective impact on the fortunes of Williams, sees the sacrifices of a 20-race F1 season to be not worth the presumably considerable remuneration he recieves. Looking at his resume, it would probably be fair to say that he is torn between wanting to work in F1 and that being incompatible with other aspects of his life. If we assume he is the sort of clever, committed guy any industry would proud to count as a member, perhaps F1 needs to consider the demands it places on its those working in it. It’s not good enough to just say “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” if the sort of guys who apparently can’t stand the heat are operating at the level Gillan is.
The sponsor thread (“Mastercard to re-ent…”) is closed, but in relation to Coca Cola, I note from this week’s Moneyweek mag, that Coke are sponsoring Beyonce (A popular songstress milord) to the tune of $50M. (to fund her “creative projects”) How does that compare with the figure they are investing in F1? I had the notion that it was about the same. If that is true, it throws an interesting perspective on the relative values of things.
That’s a shame. Williams needs top people right now to continue its renaissance and Gillan was not just a good leader but good with the media too. I guess Mike Coughlan can handle some of the former and Toto Wolff seems very media-savvy but hopefully the team will have learned from the Sam Michael experience about over-loading people.
Overloading was not the problem.
Interesting, thanks for busting the myth.
What was then?
The Peter Principle?
Any reason for suggesting that, or just a desire to be rude from the comfort of your keyboard?
Joe – this article out today talks about some of the downstream benefits of hosting a major sporting event (Rugby World Cup): http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/8096698/NZ-keeps-on-winning-from-RWC-report
These are the key messages at the end of the article: “The economic impact of large sports events can be difficult to quantify as it is calculated on the basis of money spent that would not have been otherwise,” the report said.
Modelling estimated a medium-term net expansion of the economy of 0.34 per cent of the gross domestic product, or $573 million, with an impact on the Auckland region of 0.52 per cent of GDP, or $322m.
The short-term impacts of the World Cup on the economy between 2006 and 2012, using another methodology, was assessed at $1.73 billion, with the equivalent of 29,990 jobs sustained for the equivalent of one year.
According to Statistics NZ, overseas visitor spending rose 5.7 per cent during the tournament.
It was concluded that, overall, the cup provided an economic stimulus in generally difficult times.
Surveys indicated the World Cup might have a significant tourism legacy. Tangible success would be measured by continuing tourism from target markets, but it would be difficult to isolate the cup from other influences, the report said.
Not surprisingly, only a small percentage of overseas ticketholders had been interested in doing business during the World Cup, but a network to help Kiwi businesses make new connections gained about 4500 overseas members.
Dunno. My ex biz p turned down millions to do one season of one performance, that would have been his fee. Depends what league you are in. Nick’s mate took 60 grand to do a 30 second voice-over for Concorde, when that was money. That guy also did the first deal for one of the best independent movie houses to exist. Plus, plus… Which adds up to some serious back end. One of Nick’s customers may have been the origin of the “will not get out of bed for less than ten grand” quote. (not a model, by the way)
I won’t touch a deal – not really seriously – unless it can change a life. Because I want it to get a life involved in a committed way, even for a bit. Because I want to be in that deeply also. That sells. People feel it. But if I did that every week . . maybe I’d get bored. But that is how some trade, thinking they can do this every week.
Okay, not all true, I have bread and butter living also. But you end up saying screw it to the small stuff. I’d rather have the time to spend with friends. I know I can be quite happy with next to nout. Obviously we all can do that, we all started from next to nothing. Just annoying one needs to have a penny or two when it comes to reassuring the fairer sex you’re weird, but not deadbeat! Guy I know did the best, very very wealthy father. His dad never covered his kid. Another kid, mother married money as in they had a whole block in London after their name, I last understood became a regular cop on the beat. To be away from the money. Most everybody I grew up with was hurt by money. But to really screw people for it, apart from that being low class, there is a real art to gouging. It’s called asking in the right way. Never sell low, even if you are a bucket shop.
When I recall Nick laughing about the deals he turned down, in retrospect that would have loaded him (Aled Jones, obviously couldn’t sing . .The Frisbee was not a good enough franchise, they don’t stop there . .) I simply love the memories, he was never a guy to moan. Why moan, anyhow? Life wasn’t made for that.
But 50MM US for a sponsorship. They’ll have a plan for that. And it writes off tax at the top end. Which plays right into offshore earnings withholding. After I adjusted to being on my own, you see I grew up doing things for the sheer fun of it, because that was the greatest FU I could finger to the world, well I got a shock how much anything cost. People need 100K just to live in London, family and decent home, no state subsidy, and that does not mean you get talent. Just a layout guy for a magazine. Which ain’t much cop.
This may all sound offensive to some out there, but maybe instead of being offended, take the hint: there’s real inflation going on, learn how to sell yourself. The single thing I learned, if anything, in recent years, is to be in business is to learn how to sell all the talent I can draw on. Be protective and provide a roof for people. Make your place where they want to be. This is not dreams, not unpleasant ambition, just finding the furthest you can go inside the wage envelope. The one you hand to others. My current biz p was a headhunter for a while, one move got some coverage in the FT because one bank was really pissed off. Might have pushed him out a bit. Rob helped me realize all this. Do the best for others first, then money follows.
This was about the relative value of things. Well, it’s a tough one.
I personally don’t think a pop star is worth that kind of sponsorship, because I reckon pop tin vendors have done plenty well without. But put together a team who has a clue about any of this, and you have a wage bill region of 5MM/yr so spending 50? Might not be a lot.
That’s if you do it the corporate way. I know it is possible to do things on so much less. Tell me of a filmmaker who did not start scraping it up?
What value we have in life is always disconnected with money. The art, if you will, in selling intangible values, is to never try to connect that money with reality, or else you either underprice or go do lalley
If you are a small guy, never ask too little.
Being told “no” is really not as painful as being told “no” when you asked your not rock bottom.
rpaco, am sending you a sketch, also, cheers from me!