Williams FW37 Mercedes

[Sevach]

In Q Williams was quite down in the speed trap, so, yes, I mean, no, it wasn't a problem with low downforce. Not this time.

The new package might be draggier, Williams speed traps were "mundane" all weekend.

[Mr Brooksy]

I've got to ask this as it had been plaguing my mind about Williams for the past few years. Keep in mind I'm asking because I simply don't know...

Could Williams biggest problem not be downforce but mechanical grip? I keep reading that Williams lack downforce etc, but I'm simply not convinced. Monaco and any wet race shows up their major issue. Monaco is not an aero track, wet weather is more about mechanical grip then aero, and each time conditions are less than perfect Williams falls flat.

I remember a post here about anti dive suspension being more extreme on the Williams, but the discussion didn't go much further. I can't help but wonder if this is their achillies heal or heavily related.

Is the gearbox shroud and suspension mounting points of the Mercedes something Williams need to look closely at. So that they can adjust their mounting points to suit the needs of each race (at the rear)?

Anyway, as I'm not a mechanical engineer and am only a long term F1 fan I can not reconcile this issue in my head. Any help to explain this would be appreciated.

Go Williams!

[turbof1]

Brooksy, I had the same impression. The Williams car looked to be very unstable in the rainy conditions.

I do not know for sure if it's pure mechanical grip though. It was reported somewhere the car had ride height issues when the slightly bigger wet tyres came on, getting more clearance from the ground.

It reminded me of Mclaren back in 2013, who had their diffuser stalling or loosing downforce. They pushed the enveloppe too far into the critical, sensitive area where even small bumps could inmediately rob downforce. To make matters worse, the car's suspension was very, very stiff, which meant it was not easy to drive in the first place.

All in all, I think they have a very sensitive aero platform, and probably the mechanical grip has been compromised to support that platform. They have their trademark of low drag, high speed car. However, having a low drag car comes with sacrifices. Mercedes for instance uses a lot of their wing surface to create a stable, controllable aero platform. This creates a lot of drag which does not necessarily creates more peak downforce, but the return you get is a car that is able to run in a much wider window of conditions.

It's a thing I believe Williams is trailling behind. We see a LOT of the development focus in F1 in general, being shifted to finding ways to maintain downforce rather then adding new downforce at all costs. A lot of effort goes to controlling tyre wake and squirt, and I hardly see any effort from Williams in that area.

They also are a bit stubborn in quite a bit of areas. For instance their front wing is mostly following their own philosophy. At the moment we have 2 mainstream convergence points: one where the wing elements are integrated into the endplate (Force India, Mclaren, Marussia and until recently Red Bull) and one where the endplate runs parallel with curled down sections of the wing elements (Mercedes, current Red Bull, Ferrari, Lotus,...). Those 2 groups have very much the same chararistics in their own group in the way they map out the airflow structures, only the details are different. Endplate design for instance, or outboard wing element shape.

However, Williams does not fit in either group. Again, I believe this has more to do with being stubborn. I fear they will eventually hit a death end.

[JDC123]

Brooksy, I had the same impression. The Williams car looked to be very unstable in the rainy conditions.

I do not know for sure if it's pure mechanical grip though. It was reported somewhere the car had ride height issues when the slightly bigger wet tyres came on, getting more clearance from the ground.

It reminded me of Mclaren back in 2013, who had their diffuser stalling or loosing downforce. They pushed the enveloppe too far into the critical, sensitive area where even small bumps could inmediately rob downforce. To make matters worse, the car's suspension was very, very stiff, which meant it was not easy to drive in the first place.

All in all, I think they have a very sensitive aero platform, and probably the mechanical grip has been compromised to support that platform. They have their trademark of low drag, high speed car. However, having a low drag car comes with sacrifices. Mercedes for instance uses a lot of their wing surface to create a stable, controllable aero platform. This creates a lot of drag which does not necessarily creates more peak downforce, but the return you get is a car that is able to run in a much wider window of conditions.

It's a thing I believe Williams is trailling behind. We see a LOT of the development focus in F1 in general, being shifted to finding ways to maintain downforce rather then adding new downforce at all costs. A lot of effort goes to controlling tyre wake and squirt, and I hardly see any effort from Williams in that area.

They also are a bit stubborn in quite a bit of areas. For instance their front wing is mostly following their own philosophy. At the moment we have 2 mainstream convergence points: one where the wing elements are integrated into the endplate (Force India, Mclaren, Marussia and until recently Red Bull) and one where the endplate runs parallel with curled down sections of the wing elements (Mercedes, current Red Bull, Ferrari, Lotus,...). Those 2 groups have very much the same chararistics in their own group in the way they map out the airflow structures, only the details are different. Endplate design for instance, or outboard wing element shape.

However, Williams does not fit in either group. Again, I believe this has more to do with being stubborn. I fear they will eventually hit a death end.

Can you explain to me how the williams front wing design is different to the mercedes/ferrari wing design? I am guessing you are talking about the endplate design when you compare it to the McLaren/force india design, but after looking back at the williams front wing I don't understand why it is not in the same group as the mercedes/ferrari design philosophy.

[turbof1]

I'll do so within a few hours. I'll need some time to prep illustrations.

[turbof1]

And I did just so!

Took me 10 minutes actually to adjust the images. God I love paint.net for its advanced yet simple to use tools.

Red Bull philosophy (pre-Malaysia) (sorry, I don't have a better example at present. I'll be working this week on the mclarne wing)


Mercedes current philosophy:


Williams philosophy:


I made the cascades, winglets and endplates dark-transparent, to easily show in the same image what's going on underneath or behind those parts. Endplate winglets have further been recolored to green-blue.

Note the typical characteristics of the red bull wing (again, pre malaysia mind you).
-The wing element protrude through the endplate and curl directly down to the curved section of the footplate. The curled section is actually obligatory bodywork forced by the rules there. Every team has it at that exact place with the exact same room occupied. However, there are small differences in shape, some cars featuring a half ellipse, others half circle, and even others even more squared.
-The cascades have winglets with quite a big AoA. They are relative straight and I think they are more about upwashing then outwashing airflow.
-At the back, the endplate and upper element are fused as one single piece of bodywork.
-Also note how a small strake on top of that upper element tries to redirect airflow. This an important piece actually.
-Lastly, the front wing element has a very specific shape. A longly stretched half curl. This is something we see at Force India, Mclaren and Marussia too. It's important to include Marussia in this as interestingly that team did not/does not have any ex-personel from Red Bull.
-The general outboard line of the wing is relative straight.

Then note what Mercedes does:
-There's quite a big space between the curled section of the footplate, and the base of the wing elements, which is filled by extented, flat sections of footplate.
-More at the back the wing elements start to curl agressively towards the outer extremity of the footplate, creating a more agressive outwash, for both the inside and outside airflow.
-Also note how the cascades and corresponding winglets are agressively turned outwards. This something we see often with this philosophy, but not with all teams. An exception is Toro Rosso. The outboard cascade usually features low AoA winglets, while the inboard cascade usually is a turning vane. Again, very agressively bent.
-There are winglets on the inside and/or outside of the endplate. Again, it's not a general sule but often you see those.
-The front element has a short, quite agressive curl outboard. Mercedes and now Ferrari have taken this one step further and turned it into a gutter. This is a big difference with the smooth, flat and long curl of the red bull philosophy.

Then if we finally look at Williams:
-There's a very tiny spacing between the wing elements and the endplate, with no integration of the elements into the endplate, or a heavily curling towards the backend. It's a little bit of both worlds, or perhaps actually none of either worlds.
-Cascades are slightly bent outwards. The outboard one has quite a bit of AoA, while inboard is a turning vane, but again not agressively bent like we see with cars like Lotus, Mercedes and even Ferrari. This again is more mixture from both previous philosophies.
-There are no extra small winglets on the endplate or wing elements, to steer airflow towards a certain point.
-The endplate is unusual since it's relative straight while in the previous philosophies they bent outwards. the back of the endplate features a concave shape, while this is in all other cases convex.
-The shape of the first element is relative the same to the Merc philosophy. Note however Williams features a completely different slot arrangement inbetween the elements. In both RBR's and Merc's case, we have 3 elements connected to the neutral section while Williams only has one. Yes, the likes like Ferrari and Marussia also don't have that arrangement, but also note that the tips of the upper elements are different in that area, being further seperated then with any other team. Commonly we see those tips either being very close to eachother or even merged. The whole Y250 area is tackled differently then what we usually see.

[roadie]

The front wing has not changed much since the beginning of last year from what I remember.

It is really puzzling why Williams have been so bad at Monaco and in the wet of late. Going back to the mid/end of the noughties when the car wasn't great in general, it was still fairly decent in those conditions.

Perhaps the team philosophy is just to have an envelope where the car should work very well and not to sink too much time and effort into conditions rarely seen?

In any case the design of the FW36/7 is distinct to the rest of the field.

[domh245]

Good post. This is mainly speculation and guesswork, but perhaps the other styles of wing wouldn't work as well with the FW37 as a whole package. When Lotus tested their 2015 style nose on their 2014 car at the USGP, the car didn't perform as well as it normally did, because of the rest of the package. I've got no idea how much effect a wing could make on the package, but it may be severe enough to merit developing this style wing for the rest of the season.

One thing we can all hope for though is that the FW38 will be a new philosophy car from Williams. The FW36 would have been developed with the prize money from 8th in the WCC (from 2012). The FW37 as Pat Symonds said pre-season, is largely an evolution of the FW36, and would have been done with the money from 9th in the WCC (from 2013). Now that they've got the spoils from 3rd from last year to develop the FW38 with, they can probably afford to develop a new philosophy of car design if they feel it is important enough. Likewise, it would seem that they will finish 3rd in the 2015 WCC (based on Red Bull, FI, Lotus and co. being significantly down on points compared to Williams, and Ferrari likely to maintain their lead over them) and so can invest more in car design in the future.

*NB I've taken a very simplistic view of car development and budgetary effects, but (hopefully) the principle is right

[tomazy]

Williams did tweak the wing a bit, now it is a bit diffirent from your drawing, but the concept is still the same. Pic from Austria.

[turbof1]

Williams did tweak the wing a bit, now it is a bit diffirent from your drawing, but the concept is still the same. Pic from Austria.

http://img1.auto-motor-und-sport.de/Wil ... 874191.jpg

Yes my drawings are a bit outdated; I'll have some work the coming week!

[PlatinumZealot]

Williams wing is a low drag wing. There is not much vortex generating elements on it. (mostly wing tips, end-plate and foot plate). Using CFD eyes it doesn't create an intricate flow distributions as the mercedes. This has less than stellar effects down-stream of the front wing. So the Williams does not have much under-body down-force. They have been known to heavily rely on their rear wing and their car is very rear wing sensitive because of this. The philosophy of the front wing and the under-body has to change before Williams become and all-rounder. Not to say they have poor peak down-force. They do; but they certainly have crappy low speed down-force that is for sure.

The Mercedes wing is designed to create many different vortices in certain locations. The high curvature on the main plane Pluse the very pronounced curls at the outboard end on the main plain create very strong flow structures which do make more drag in themselves, but actually may have a drag reducing effect when they interact with other structures down stream. As said before the wing is made to give down-force under many conditions of yaw, pitch, and wind speed.

The RedBull front wing despite what others may want people to believe, is not a high down-force wing.

[turbof1]

Williams wing is a low drag wing. There is not much vortex generating elements on it. (mostly wing tips, end-plate and foot plate). Using CFD eyes it doesn't create an intricate flow distributions as the mercedes. This has less than stellar effects down-stream of the front wing. So the Williams does not have much under-body down-force. They have been known to heavily rely on their rear wing and their car is very rear wing sensitive because of this. The philosophy of the front wing and the under-body has to change before Williams become and all-rounder. Not to say they have poor peak down-force. They do; but they certainly have crappy low speed down-force that is for sure.

The Mercedes wing is designed to create many different vortices in certain locations. The high curvature on the main plane Pluse the very pronounced curls at the outboard end on the main plain create very strong flow structures which do make more drag in themselves, but actually may have a drag reducing effect when they interact with other structures down stream. As said before the wing is made to give down-force under many conditions of yaw, pitch, and wind speed.

The RedBull front wing despite what others may want people to believe, is not a high down-force wing.

Agreed with what all you said (better explained then I actually did!). Especially what you said about the red bull style front wing; it does not necessarily produce more or less downforce; it's simply a different philosophy, tackling airflow streams in a different manner.

I often hear people taking the word "simple" in the mouth. I dare not speak it, but I am thinking it.

[Sevach]

The Williams FW is a bit like what Mclaren had last year (kinda squared looking compared to what Mclaren runs now).

That wing was said to produce more downforce than the first "Prodomou wing" but less consistently, which would agree with Platinum Zealot's views.

[trinidefender]

I want to claw my eyes out with some of the stuff I am reading here about Williams wing being "to simplistic" over the last couple posts. Turbo, you made far to many over simplifications.

[Mr Brooksy]

Thanks heaps for the aero explanations. That makes more sense now, thanks to all who contributed!

But I'm still eager to know about their suspension philosophy. I can easily see the front suspension seems very unique with very high mounting points for both upper and lower A arms; and the rear has lost the harsh drive shaft angle of the old 7 speed box design.