Team: Patrick Head (Director of Engineering), Alex Burns (CEO), Frank Williams (TP), Ed Wood (CD), Jon Tomlinson (HA), Sam Michael (TD) Drivers: Rubens Barrichello (11), Pastor Maldonado (12), Valtteri Bottas (test)
A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
ringo wrote:this livery looks too dead.
The dark gothic emo thing doesn't work for something as lively as F1. You want to convey an energetic feeling.
I hope the car is bright blue gold red and white.
That would be stunning.
Is it just me, or does the Williams packaging actually not look like it's anything special, just that they moved the rear wheels further rearwards so that the floor extended more towards the back from the sidepods termination?
The sidepods round into each other, never seen that before. The gearbox is tiny. The rear suspension supports are on the pylon of the wing. I've never seen any of that before. It's very unique
I still don't know how they're managing their heat exhaustion with that rear end. Where is all the hot air going? Compare their rear end to Red Bull's, and even they have a massive exhaust outlet for the heat.
Williams are running KERS and such too. But I think that's all based around the splitter/plough which is why it's much bigger than most others, but the cooling for this car still baffles me.
I think the livery for this car is too dark to do it justice in terms of how unique it is. Hopefully the real deal is much different.
I think the sidepod heat exhausts are visible in this picture, right at the very, very bottom. That's very different to where Red Bull gets rid of their heat.
This looks really funny.
Never seen a F1 car that looks like this before.
Is this rounded bodywork even good for drag?
If this fat area is not there it would actually look really good.
What are they hidding below it?
Is the engine that big?
IIRC, the engine is the last thing before the gearbox, as you go backwards? If so, then that bulge has to be the engine. All the teams' cars have to have an engine, so that lump probably exists in all of the other cars.
I'd guess that the only reason that it is so noticeable on this car is because Williams have done such a good job of shrinking the gearbox, and decided to put their sidepod exhausts right down at the bottom of the car, instead of in between the two wings it the back, like the Red Bull did last year.
mep wrote:
Is this rounded bodywork even good for drag?
If this fat area is not there it would actually look really good.
What are they hidding below it?
Is the engine that big?
I assume the truncated rear bodywork is meant to set up a low pressure zone directly behind it and ahead of the rear wings, to help pull more air through that area. Simply having the bodywork taper (as Red Bull do on the lower portion of there sidepods) would not be able to set up such an extreme pressure differential as what the Williams can. More drag, but that void will want to pull a lot of air around the engine cover and hence through the RW endplates. That's my guess.
Also notice the current trend of putting the oil cooler on top of the bellhousing/gearbox this goes some way to explain the chunkiness on a few cars in that area. Mclaren last year especially.
My impression is that having the engine compartment exhaust riught under the beamwing like that it gets energized by both that and the diffuser so some extraction speed is generated.
(apologies for crud grammar)
the four immutable forces:
static balance
dynamic balance
static imbalance
dynamic imbalance
Yep, there's a cooling outlet either side of the rear crash structure, just above the diffuser and below the beam wing. It's fairly obvious from the rear shot. In the image within the post quoted
tommylommykins wrote:I think the sidepod heat exhausts are visible in this picture, right at the very, very bottom. That's very different to where Red Bull gets rid of their heat.