Arriving in Formula 1 at the turn of the millennium, St. John’s College Oxford graduate Dave Robson brought with him a wealth of experience in stress analysis and laboratory testing within the steel industry in his native North-East.
After joining McLaren as junior stress engineer in 2000, Dave Robson tried his hand at a number of engineering roles with the Woking squad before becoming Jenson Button’s race engineer for the 2010 Formula 1 season.
He remained in the role until part-way through the 2014 season when he was replaced by Tom Stallard, before leaving the team in December of that year.
On leaving McLaren he joined Williams Racing as Felipe Massa‘s race engineer, working under the stewardship of fellow Smoggie Rob Smedley, Williams’ then Head of Vehicle Performance.
At the beginning of the 2018 season, Robson stepped up in to the role of Williams’ Principal Engineer/Senior Race Engineer.
In his role he has overseen a couple of challenging seasons as Williams seek to overcome a regression that began with a fundamentally flawed FW41 in 2018, and that continued into 2019 with a more stable, and yet more poorly performing FW42 that guided the Williams team to its worst ever championship finish.
Away from Formula 1, Robson is a keen supporter of careers in STEM industries, encouraging under-represented social groups in applying to Oxford University, and is a keen advocate of the North East of England of Teesside and of Stockton, from where he hails.
Dave Robson’s name may be familiar to you, being the guy who provides the post-race soundbites on the Williams website after every Grand Prix (these days usually containing the words ‘difficult’ and ‘struggled’) – an unenviable task given Williams’ current form.
He is a supporter of Middlesbrough football club in the EFL Championship, and Durham CCC.
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