2016 Williams Martini Racing F1 Team - Mercedes

[LookBackTime]

WilliamsRacing: So we start the season 3rd in the constructors', 1 point behind Ferrari and two ahead of Red Bull #AusGP https://t.co/BNwASNCLtZ

[Sevach]

Good result, not so good performance.

That nose+FW needs to be something else.

[LookBackTime]

AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX

20 MAR 2016
Melbourne, Australia
5.303kms / 3.295 miles

Race Notes:

• Felipe Massa finished fifth and Valtteri Bottas eighth in the Australian Grand Prix.
• After starting P16 due to a grid penalty for a gearbox change, Valtteri spent most of his race overtaking and fighting with Sainz, Verstappen, Hulkenberg and Grosjean for sixth. He made up eight places from his starting position.
• The race was red-flagged on lap 18 following a collision between Gutierrez and Alonso.
• After the first race of the season, Williams is third in the Constructors’ Championship.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: Australia is always a strange race. You come here and there are lots of unknowns with pace, in both qualifying and the race. You just want to make sure you get through it with a decent haul of points, and we have done that. We can hold our heads reasonably high after that race. We made the right call in the pit lane under the red flag, fitting the medium tyres and going to the end. That’s got us third in the championship now. Today has probably been the calmest day of the weekend, with all the various regulation and rule changes. Today we just got our heads down and did the job. Now we look forward to developing the car as we have some good upgrades coming. We need to look at every little bit of performance we can get out of the car and get ourselves into a slightly better position. The guys did a brilliant job in the pits today. We’ve redesigned the wheel nuts and axles, and the crew themselves did an amazing job. We got both stops close to two seconds, so I’m very happy with that.

Felipe Massa: It was a good race. To finish fifth, scoring some good points, is definitely a good start to the season. The red flag in the middle helped us to keep our strategy to one-stop and, thanks to that, we managed to overtake both Toro Rossos who had decided to go for different tyres. That’s why I am happy with the result - and for Valtteri as well, he started P16 and finished P8, so it was a great drive for him.

Valtteri Bottas: It has obviously been a very difficult week. The struggles we had with qualifying and then the grid penalty compromised the race. It wasn’t the nice clean race we were hoping for, but we still have points from both of our cars. We are definitely aiming for better positions, and myself personally, so I am looking forward to Bahrain because I am sure we can do better than this weekend.

[Stalker1]

Considering the fact that they cannot install the the nose and new front wing yet, Australian GP was certainly a success for Williams. I am little bit worried about the gap to Ferrari and Mercedes- it is bigger than anticipated.

Then again, well-thought strategy today and fast box stops add a little bit more confidence in them. I hope they have finally solved race strategy and boc stop issues.

[Mr Brooksy]

The car didn't look very stable this weekend. It just didn't look like it was planted or responsive.

I really hope that the new nose really does make a world of difference, but I'm concerned that only Massa has it for Bahrain due to not enough time to produce 2 in time (if reports are to be believed).

Wish that they had the $$ needed to fight with the big teams!

It's frustrating being a loyal Williams supporter knowing that they could do so much more if they had more resources.

[Martin_F]

Thought this was pretty cool:
https://www.facebook.com/WilliamsF1Team ... 647909484/

[LookBackTime]

RACING ON THE INFORMATION SUPER HIGHWAY

http://raconteur.net/business/racing-on ... er-highway


Q&A WITH GRAEME HACKLAND
Williams Martini Racing IT director

Q: What unique IT challenges does Williams face?

A: The biggest challenge that we have is the constant need to improve, and to innovate, to remain ahead of the competition. The team that works on the car is used to this, of course, and so this is expected across the board from everyone at the company. Race tracks also tend to have very little IT infrastructure in place prior to a race, so we need a flexible partner, such as BT, who we can trust to get the job done to a high standard in a short space of time.

Q: How important is IT to Formula 1?

A: The right IT infrastructure is critical to our success because now we are moving data around the world – data that has been generated by a Formula 1 car going around a track at 300 kilometres per hour. Being able to move the data in real time, over a secure and reliable network, allows our engineers to work on that data and to feedback to improve the performance of the car.

Q: What are your other key IT concerns?

A: With around 650 people working at the company, the majority of them based at our HQ in Grove, we need to support every one of them and all their communications, networking and remote-working requirements. Our campus network needs to be able to withstand high capacity data peaks so that when we are operating our wind tunnel or receiving data from the race track, this doesn’t impact upon our day-to-day computing needs.

Q: What is the one thing that you always keep in mind when making IT decisions?

A: Teams of our size in Formula 1 need to be really clever about where to direct investment and resources, and the thing I always ask myself is “will it make the car go faster”. If it makes the car go faster, then we do it, and if it’s not contributing to that in some way, then we don’t do it – it’s that simple. In fact, for all types of businesses there is the equivalent of “making the car go faster” and technology should be driving that.

[LookBackTime]

Gym Walkthrough

[LookBackTime]

BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX PREVIEW

01 - 03 APR
ROUND 2 OF 21

BAHRAIN INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT, SAKHIR
Bahrain led Formula One’s expansion into the Middle East in 2004 and will this year hold its 12th Grand Prix and its third as a night race. No longer one of the calendar’s new additions, the Sakhir International Circuit has proved one of the more popular modern-era races and hosts one of the most entertaining Grands Prix of the year. The temperatures, dust and sand around the 5.4km layout present teams with a unique mechanical challenge in which to operate Formula One cars at peak performance.

http://www.williamsf1.com/racing/news/b ... gp-preview

Pat Symonds
The Bahrain International Circuit is quite tough in all respects. It's important to have good high-speed balance in the car and look after the rear tyres in particular. We will see much hotter conditions, and there is always a concern over wind and sand, which was a real factor in the early part of the weekend last year. Following the cooler Australian conditions, we will now see how our cooling systems stand up in the heat and what impact opening up these systems has on aerodynamic performance. The tyre choice shows a bit of variation as well with Ferrari and ourselves appearing to be going down a different route to Mercedes, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out over the weekend.


Felipe Massa
Bahrain is definitely a place I really enjoy racing. I’ve won twice there and I’ve had many other good results. I always enjoy going there, including many times for testing. I like the people as well as the place in general and I look forward to having a good race there. It's the second race of the season now and I really hope we can have another fantastic result in a place I enjoy.


Valtteri Bottas
The Bahrain evening race is a really nice one. I prefer it much more as an evening race. The track looks good and is just as nice to drive. It's a good track for racing and I got a decent result last year. It's quite a different kind of track to Melbourne, so it's going to be interesting to see where we are compared to the others; because it's more like a standard race track rather than the Melbourne street circuit. It will still only be the second race of the season, so I'm looking forward to it.

[LookBackTime]

WILLIAMS RACING ‏@WilliamsRacing 1m1 minute ago
We're in Bahrain...but we brought a bit of Oxfordshire with us! Greeted by heavy rain & hail this morning #BahrainGP

[LookBackTime]

Valtteri Bottas ‏@ValtteriBottas
All set for the weekend! @WilliamsRacing #BahrainGP #F1 #vb77

[FLuidd]

Williams stocks are garbage to put it easy. The investor interest is low and the medium future looks bad.

A quick search online will reveal the fact that since 2014 WGPH are struggling.

[LookBackTime]

WILLIAMS RACING ‏@WilliamsRacing
Lots of TV & press duties for our boys @ValtteriBottas and @MassaFelipe19 today... Getting ready for the #BahrainGP

[LookBackTime]

BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX PRACTICE

01 APR 2016
Sakhir, Bahrain

5.412kms/3.363 miles

FP1
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 22-23°C / 29-33°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:35.174 (12th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid 1:35.006 (10th)
Quickest time: N. Rosberg (1:32.294)

FP2
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 20-21°C / 22-25°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:32.792 (8th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid 1:32.873 (10th)
Quickest time: N. Rosberg (1:31.001)

Objectives: Aero evaluations, set up and tyre work.

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It was a key day for us because we missed out on so much work in Melbourne due to the weather during practice. The good news is, that we’ve got through the majority of that work now. We’ve definitely learnt a lot about the car which has been really good and we can take that through to tomorrow, to help us improve the car pace. Tyre work has been really interesting as well. We just need to put it all together now. There’s a lot to look at tonight, but I think it is fairly clear what we need to do and where we are heading. The low fuel runs were good and put us about where we expected to be. The high fuel runs were also very encouraging as they were better than what we saw in the Melbourne race. In addition, we’ve got some further upgrades coming for tomorrow which will put us in even better shape.

Valtteri Bottas: We managed to complete our running as planned with no issues at all so it’s been a good day. The car felt better in the evening practice session with the lower temperatures and less wind, which is good as we need the car to be at its best at the same time of day for qualifying and the race. We can still improve, but what was encouraging was the consistency we showed in long runs on the medium tyre.

Felipe Massa: It was a normal Friday for us really. We were focusing on trying to understand the balance of the car, how it performs on different tyres, and we completed some good long runs at the end. We have collected a lot of information today and now we’ll be trying to understand it to make improvements for tomorrow.

[LookBackTime]

BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX QUALIFYING

02 APR 2016
Sakhir, Bahrain

5.412kms/3.363 miles

Qualifying Notes
• Valtteri Bottas qualified sixth and Felipe Massa seventh for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
• Both cars made it through to Q3 setting their fastest laps on supersoft tyres.

Weather: Warm and dry
Temperature: Air: 21-23C, Track: 26-28C

Q1
V. Bottas: 1:31.672 (5th)
F. Massa: 1:32.045 (12th)
Quickest time: N. Rosberg 1:31.325

Q2
V. Bottas: 1:30931 (5th)
F. Massa: 1:31.374 (7th)
Quickest time: L. Hamilton 1:30.039

Q3
V. Bottas: 1:31.153 (6th)
F. Massa: 1:31.155 (7th)
Quickest time: L. Hamilton 1:29.493

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It’s always fraught at the beginning of this new qualifying format when you need to think about your strategy and timings, but by the time you’re in the middle of Q2 it all evens out and you know where your pace is. We ran again in Q2 on the basis that we wanted to get the drivers ready for Q3 and use the extra track time. We knew that Ferrari and Mercedes would just be a little bit too far away from us and so we wouldn’t be able to do a second run in Q3. You need to be fourth after your first run in order to run again, or by the time you run again you will be knocked out. The drivers were improving throughout and I think we’ve got ourselves into a reasonable position. We are roughly the third quickest car so we are in a good positon for the race tomorrow. The drivers are reasonably well matched as there is very little between them, just two milliseconds in Q3. That is what we want to see. The set-up and tyre work we did on Friday is very encouraging in terms of race pace. We’ve got a reasonable strategy planned, so we just need to execute it tomorrow to come out with a good haul of points.

Valtteri Bottas: It was a good qualifying session and we managed to get the maximum out of the car we had. In Felipe’s car we’ve also made progress with the new front wing today, which is good. We start the race in a strong position and the target will be to finish in the top five which I think is definitely possible. We just have to find a way to get past the Red Bull and the fact that we have better straight-line speed compared to them should help us. I’m hoping for a nice clean race and to collect some good points tomorrow for both cars.

Felipe Massa: It was definitely a good qualifying. We always expected to be a little bit more in front. It was a difficult day trying the new wing in practice and then not really having the balance, so we took our time to decide whether or not we would use it in qualifying. We decided to use it and managed to improve our time which was important. We need more time though to understand this front wing to get the most from it. I’m pretty upbeat about our position for qualifying, though. We know the race will be long tomorrow. We have one Red Bull in front and also one behind. Both Toro Rossos are behind, as are the other teams we are fighting, so we know the race will be difficult. We will try the best we can to score as many points as possible.