From a purely driving standpoint, Chandhok's impressions of the 14B were further shaped by the fact that he was able to back-to-back it with the current FW40 on the same day. Both experiences were instructive ¬– Chandhok's last F1 start came at Hockenheim in 2011, so the FW40 was his first experience with a hybrid. There are YouTube videos that record his impressions of current machinery. ("Unbelievable amount of downforce," he exclaims as he heads into Stowe. "Your head goes straight into the headrest... but the traction is SO good!"). But that seat time also spoke volumes about how the cars of the 14B's era compare with the cars of now.
"It was a pretty amazing experience to drive them back-to-back; to jump out of one and into the other," Chandhok says.
"The 2017 car... everything feels filtered. That's the best way I can describe it. None of the sensations feel pure. Everything comes through a computer – the throttle, the brakes, the steering – everything feels like it's coming through some sort of filter before you feel it in your body. That's what the modern cars are like.
"You contrast that with the car from '92, and although the technology at the time was extraordinary, with the active suspension, launch control, traction control, all of these things that were completely revolutionary at the time, it still doesn't have power steering, it still doesn't have fly-by-wire throttle. It's a cable throttle; you have to blip on the down-change. You're feeling vibrations through the engine. All of that stuff that you can feel is totally different to a current car. You feel everything much more purely and unfiltered. That's what comes to mind, is how pure it feels in contrast to the modern cars."
Despite Williams Heritage having only been around for three years, and the work involved in getting a museum car back onto the track, Chandhok is rapidly ticking Williamses off his list. He has driven most of the team's championship-winners, including Rosberg's FW08 from 1992, and the FW18 and FW19 used by Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in 1996 and 1997 respectively, with the FW15C that took Alain Prost to the 1993 title scheduled to join that list next year.
"The Damon car is stunning," he says. "The driveability on that engine is so, so good... it's just a nice car. It looks right; everything is proportionate. It's actually really comfy as well. The 14B is ****ing uncomfortable. A lot of these cars are uncomfortable – they're Newey cars. But the Damon car is really comfortable when you're in the cockpit. I asked Damon about it, and he said it was the first car that his big feet fitted in comfortably. He said that he told Adrian at the end of 1996, 'If you'd given me a car that my feet fit in early, I'd have won the championship earlier'.
"The one I'd love to drive is Nelson Piquet's '87 car with the Honda turbo, just so I can experience 1000-whatever it is horsepower. OK, the modern hybrids are 1000bhp, and having now driven of one of those, it was seriously impressive how powerful those cars are. But the Honda turbos... there was NO driveability in those days. The power was like an on/off switch. I think that would be a pretty immense experience."
If engine availability is one major factor in determining which Williams cars get the 'Heritage' treatment, heritage itself is another. The FW14B was chosen in part because of its significance in Williams' history, but the response from fans surpassed even the team's expectations. With modern F1 trying to establish a path for itself into the future, Chandhok believes that there are lessons to be learned from the reception to the past.
"When we put a video of the 14B onto Facebook, we'll have 100,000 hits in two days," he says.
"You just don't get that with modern cars. Most of our videos get 20,000 to 26,000 views on average. And that makes you think about things like the sound. I understand the importance of road relevance to manufacturers and this, that and the other, but things like this show that F1 is at a crossroads. Back in 1992, did they really think about road relevancy? No. They talked about the sound, the entertainment, and the show. So does F1 need to say, 'You know what, we have categories like Formula E and sports cars and stuff, which can be road relevant. Should we just focus on making the loudest, most fearsome cars that people like watching?'.
"I remember standing at Beckett's at Silverstone years ago during a mid-season test and Michael Schumacher came around and I thought, '**** me, that is amazing'. And you don't get that anymore. On the Williams Fan Day we ran the hybrid car at the same time that we ran the 14B – Paul di Resta was in the hybrid and I was in the 14B – and without fail everyone came back saying, 'huh, the modern car sounds a bit ****, doesn't it?'. And you can't hide that."
But issues like that are for Liberty to worry about. For Chandhok, any Williams Heritage-related stress is likely centered around how quickly someone can get a Renault turbo working so that he can drive an FW11B. And that sounds like a pretty good problem to have.
