Williams FW33

[raymondu999]

Anyone spotted the Senna S yet? Just remembered Senna's Williams was a Rothmans piece

[Giblet]

It's usually between the front wing pillars. His name leads the car.

[bhall]

Better?

[raymondu999]

Is anyone getting a frog in an icecube picture as a placeholder? I seem to have lost the ability to view imageshack pictures

[raymondu999]

From the picture used in the livery comparisons, does anyone else think that the tight rear end is highly funky looking, kind of like "truncated" from the side? It looks as if the wheelbase is actually short, but then moved the rear wing and tyres backwards to create an empty gap.

[tok-tokkie]

I am getting the frog in icecube all over the place. It requires you to register a domain name. I have done that (with trepidation) but nothing has yet changed.

[Spencifer_Murphy]

Anyone spotted the Senna S yet? Just remembered Senna's Williams was a Rothmans piece

In the last image posted by Formula None:



Look at the front wing support...see the little red square with a squiggle in it? That's it. It just looks like a blob because of the distance lol

[joseff]

I'm biased, but that is *the* most beautiful car of 2011.

Really, really wish Rubens would consider wearing a green and yellow helmet...

[Formula None]

Sam Michael:

“All of our KERS is contained underneath the chassis. We did that mainly for aerodynamic reasons.

“Previously people had pushed that into the sidepods. But when you do that you affect this undercut, where the sidepod scoops in above the floor, which is very critical. If you package the KERS out there you start pushing this undercut wider and losing downforce.

“So immediately we said we wanted to keep everything inside the chassis and if necessary make the chassis longer. Which is what we did because that’s not really a penalty.”

“The driveshaft angles that we’ve had to put the car through are very extreme. They’re higher angles than anyone’s ever done in Formula 1 before.

“That took a lot of dyno testing, we’ve completed many thousands of kilometres. The first time we started doing tests on the driveshaft was back in June last year. We had a full gearbox and rear end on the dyno by September/October time. We knew by then that we were under control with it.”

However he said the finished design did not force any compromises on rigidity: “The last part of the rear end which was something that was a concern to us to start with was the stiffness.

“But none of the stiffness of the gearbox on all parameters is lower than last year’s car. And once again there’s two or three tricks we had to apply and really take a non-conventional view to F1 suspension design to achieve that.

“As a result we haven’t had any problems with the stiffness of the car.”

Michael pointed out the team have covered 3,800km with the new car and “We’ve had no issues with the transmission, no issues with the rear suspension, no problems at all – which is great.

“The fundamental part of the car is right and it enables us to just concentrate on performance.”

He added: “We’ve had lots of little teething problems and tiny things which take three minutes to fix but have cost us six hours in the garage on some days. There’s been a couple of little, annoying system problems like that, but generally pretty good.”

“One thing that’s very interesting about Formula 1 now is that if you look at the cars, there’s some very interesting concepts out there. And the reason why is because the rules have been restrained so much on bodywork, and you can do very little on the diffuser now, teams have had to push very hard in other areas and take much bigger risks than they would have done in the past.

“The interesting designs for me are, obviously you’ve got the Williams tight rear end, you’ve got the double floor on the Toro Rosso, the forward exhaust on the Renault – these are all things that, potentially, some of them you could have done before.

“But you didn’t because there was much bigger gains for much lower risk. And I think that’s great for Formula 1 because the cars don’t look the same, they do look different, and everyone’s trying different concepts.”

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2011/02/24/sam-michael/

[Formula None]

I realize this is probably just for the livery intro, but really I'm hoping someone at AT&T was convinced by Williams to purchase that coveted behind-the-driver's-head real estate:

[raymondu999]

That doesn't seem like it'll get much cam time in the races and qualifying etc

[Saribro]

Well, it has at least 2 people already talking about it :p.

[ESPImperium]

You will probably find that someone t williams did convince someone at AT&T to take that area. Most teams will have something there. Renault and STR have OMP there, Ferrari did have a barcode there once.

Its a nothing area, but even when a driver retires its gonna get some lens time. That area is worth up to €500,000 team dependant. Im sure it was a throw in for AT&T when Williams got their title sponsorship deal.

Im seeing on that williams as much as €50m of lost advertising with the amount of empty space on the car. But they are in the same boat as Sauber and many other teams.

[Giblet]

Just like their cell signal, you can't always see it.

The Williams is using ingenuity to come up with what appears to be a decent car with some mild cooling troubles, instead of throwing money at it.

[ringo]

That doesn't seem like it'll get much cam time in the races and qualifying etc

That's for when the car pulls up into parc ferme in front of the #1 placard.
Driver jumps out and bam!! AT&T is in the money shot.