Team: Pat Symonds (CTO), Rob Smedley (Head of Performance Engineering), Jason Somerville (HA), Ed Wood (CD), Claire Williams (DTP), Frank Williams (TP), Patrick Head (Co-Founder), Mike O'Driscoll (Group CEO) Drivers: Felipe Massa, Valtteri Bottas (77), Susie Wolff (3rd), Alex Lynn (Development) Team name: Williams Martini Racing
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.
Tobias Grüner AMuS @tgruener
#F1 Updates final Barcelona test: Williams to run new single pillar mounted rearwing, new floor & new sidepod deflectors.
Pretty sure they have a lot of cooling bits up there. Maybe Mercedes found that moving it up there saves weight with less piping, and frees up a lot of space in the sidepods where more downforce is generated?
The Merc sidepods are definitely very small, not just horizontally but vertically as well.
I'd think if that's the case they would have a larger shape to the fin area moving back towards the exhaust, like Mclaren has. Maybe it's a liquid to air charge cooler and cools the liquid in the radiators in the side pods. You wouldn't need the airflow in that area then, like Mclaren requires.
So, Williams is at the top of the speed traps again.
On the assumption that Mercedes will be dominant for a second year running would it be wise, or even possible, for Williams to optimise the car explicitly for high-speed circuits and go for wins there?
It seems to me that there are quite a few high-speed circuits this year - Monza, Spa, Austria, Canada, Sochi - where Williams might press for a win with a low-drag/high-speed set-up. Austria and Spa last year were lost opportunities, I think.
This might/may come at the expense of performance at higher downforce circuits, but I don't think that they were in with a change for a win at these circuits anyway.