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.
This is the speculation Thread about the 2020 Williams FW43. Rumors, articles, ideas and fantasies about the car can be posted here. Once the car gets officially launched, this thread will be closed and discussion continues in the official Thread.
The one feature of the FW42 that we know can be straightforwardly addressed with the FW43 is over-cooling (which George Russell referred to in an interview before Mexico). The FW42 looks bulkier around the engine cover than other cars to my eyes; how much of that is down to different colour schemes it's hard to say, but the FW42 had a pretty huge radiator behind the airbox, which looked rather wider than other teams were using. Given what Racing Point achieved with their comprehensive late-season upgrade, I would expect at the very least, the FW43 to be a lot more svelte and tightly packaged than the FW42.
The outwash promoting front wing introduced at COTA seems to have produced benefits and was always spoken about as more of a proof of concept for next year, but it wouldn't surprise me if just about everyone turns up with a FW like that.
Finally, I expect the same mid-blue and white fade colour scheme to adorn the new car
Are William's even going to bother spending more than 5 minutes on this car? Surely it is all about 2021 for them, unless they have managed to find about 3 seconds over the winter?!
Are William's even going to bother spending more than 5 minutes on this car? Surely it is all about 2021 for them, unless they have managed to find about 3 seconds over the winter?!
Considering how much work they were doing on correlation before the 2021 rules were finalised, it makes sense that they’d put some effort into 2020. And judging by the noises coming from the team, they have found a chunk of time. I can understand the temptation to focus on 2021, but if they don’t want an exodus of sponsors, a big effort to bring themselves into contact with the back of the midfield for at least part of the year would seem wise.
If they cannot improve with now understood rules in 2020, how can they/we/their sponsors expect any good from 2021? And given how far back they are, gaining a chunk sould really be least, even if I can't say I really expect it so much as I hope for it by now.
Not sure any of this matters. Williams needs a new culture, new people, and new money...in that order. Not sure they have any of that.
...as for Latifi, I expect him to halve the distance Kub was to GR.
Unfortunately, William's best hope is that Alfa and Hass continue to worsen.
yes i don't know if it's a good sign that they've just sold a majority stake in their engineering business Williams Advanced Engineering, that eventually Frank will accept the inevitable and sell the team. That's what they need as you say. Still, we can hope for a better year at least
The car be similar in concept to 2019 but with actual correlation to the tunnel.
There will be new engineers leading the charge too. So exect a gradual McLaren-like turn around next year in preparation for 2020
Not sure whether better suited here or the 2019 Williams Team thread, however looking at their partners page the team have lost Orlen (obvious I know) but also Rexona too. That’s a large sponsor who the team have lost!
Not sure whether better suited here or the 2019 Williams Team thread, however looking at their partners page the team have lost Orlen (obvious I know) but also Rexona too. That’s a large sponsor who the team have lost!
Sofina is missing as well. That's three out of five logos highlighted on the front in 2019 missing.
EDIT: Sofina is owned by Latifi, I wonder why wouldn't he want to highlight his own company any more, given he had to pay substancial amount for a seat for his son.
I'm pretty sure in the coming weeks there will be special event / announcement of sponsorship deal with Sofina (or any other company tied to Latifi) just like we saw last year with ORLEN...
"There are only three sports: bull fighting, car racing and mountain climbing. The rest are mere games!" - Ernest Hemingway
Not sure web editing is directly relevant to the FW43... It's a bit of a howler but updating corporate pages is not really a huge priority, especially as there are months to go before the season. Moreover, the team has not announced a reserve driver yet, so it could just be that they are waiting until they have all the drivers named before updating the site.
Well my prediction that the black-on-blue/white colour scheme would be carried over into this year might or might not be accurate, but RWR social media branding has changed from the black-white-red of last year to white-on-black. Furthermore, the Sofina logo used on the official announcement was white-on-black rather than the company's more usual dark blue-on-white, so is this an indication that we're looking at a white-on-black scheme for the FW43?
I'd be interested to know whether Williams is seriously moving into off-the-shelf parts for 2020. Obviously we know that they're going to keep making their own gearbox (which is absolutely the right move ahead of 2021, IF they're introducing a carbon 'box which they really should do) but there are a lot of smaller and less performance-related parts that could be bought off the shelf. This will save money and allow engineers to focus on areas that have a significant impact on performance. The example that's often given is the pedal box (I heard a story recently that Williams were doing some work on the F4 spec chassis and realised that the pedal box in that car was better than the bespoke one they were spending a fortune on creating) and there must be a lot of other components like this. The fly in that particular ointment might be Patrick Head, who was always one of the driving forces behind Williams engineering absolutely everything on the car. That said, he's strictly in a consultant role and my understanding is that it's more in the line of management processes and practices than anything more practical. But we'll see.
It's a bit of a howler but updating corporate pages is not really a huge priority, especially as there are months to go before the season. Moreover, the team has not announced a reserve driver yet, so it could just be that they are waiting until they have all the drivers named before updating the site.
Someone in some other forum described it perfectly:
j-s wrote:It's telling how the website is being neglected. Normally you see these informations updated within first 48 hours of a new year. By that logic you could just close the website alltogether because who cares about the website. It's not like the website is run by an engineer who has to decide between updating website or working on the car.
Website is a small thing but then again, if you can't control the smallest things, how are you able to cope with the biggest tasks? It makes me wonder if that's not a sign of things being totally out of control at Williams. If there's nobody to take care about website being up to date, maybe there are also more important areas nobody is taking care of because of leadership shortages? It doesn't have to be an indicator of that but it might be.
One can say car is much more important than website so you don't care about website but a serious company should have people doing both things properly at all times and if it fails to provide one, maybe that's because of a more general problem of choosing the right people to do the right things at the right time.
"There are only three sports: bull fighting, car racing and mountain climbing. The rest are mere games!" - Ernest Hemingway
