Williams F1 Staff Receives $3M Bonus Despite Team's '14 Loss Of £42.5M

Williams F1 Team rewarded its staff with a bonus worth £2M ($3M) after "returning to the front of the grid following a decade in the wilderness" -- despite making a £42.5M loss last year, according to Daniel Johnson of the London TELEGRAPH. The product of "10 years of poor performance" was "reflected in the sizeable loss" for '14 announced on Monday: the "hangover" from its awful run, according to the team's senior management. F1's critics -- and some of its struggling teams -- "will seize on the headline figure to point to the sport's ills, but Williams insisted there is a more nuanced picture." The overall loss for the group, which includes an advanced engineering business, was £34.3M as opposed to an £11.9M profit in '13. The team also lost sponsorship revenue from Pastor Maldonado and Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA, "which is believed to be worth" as much as £30M ($46M). Maldonado went to Lotus and his money is "keeping that team afloat" (TELEGRAPH, 4/27).