Williams FW37 Mercedes

[Advino116]

Venturing slightly off topic but from what was said about Hamilton listening to a Merc engine on the dyno this winter and recognising the circuit, the remark was 'that's one less change up the hill than last year' - so you could infer that yes, Merc will probably be running longer lower ratios as well this year, so that would be both williams and merc switching - which leads you to believe they've either found some midrange power from the ICE or extracted even more of a boost from the KERS.

KERS can only output 4MJ over the entire lap, and from Mercedes' performance last year, I'd say they've reached that limit already, so whatever power improvements from the PU will to have come from the ICE.

[tomazy]

I didnt spot anything new on the car, but made an interesting observation comparig this two pictures. The right sidepod has a buldge under R of Rexona, the left one doesnt, but it has two small eccess panels.

[PhillipM]

KERS can only output 4MJ over the entire lap, and from Mercedes' performance last year, I'd say they've reached that limit already, so whatever power improvements from the PU will to have come from the ICE.

Depends if they could deploy the maximum output rate, at all operating ranges, if they couldn't then it's still plausible - deploying as much energy as early as you can out of a corner is better than using less for longer.

[Sevach]

Peter mentions in that video williams are now matching merc's gear ratios to avoid excessive tire deg from shifting mid corner. But merc ran shorter gears after the joker change last year (shortest of the field). Could they have reverted back to longer ones for 2015? No jokers mid season this year. Still testing though.

Bringing this back, look at Felipe's gear changes on the 2 long left handers in the middle sector.



Down to 4th and immediately up to 5th, probably the thing that needed changing.

[Juzh]

Could be the case. Though probably not a major issue, or else they'd change it with last year's joker already?

[RA168E]

Could that also be just short shifting to not overcook the rears?

[Sevach]

[Sevach]

[Juzh]

KERS can only output 4MJ over the entire lap, and from Mercedes' performance last year, I'd say they've reached that limit already, so whatever power improvements from the PU will to have come from the ICE.

MGU-K can output more than 4MJ because energy coming directly from MGU-H is unlimited.

[LookBackTime]

[LookBackTime]

[LookBackTime]

Scott Mitchell from Autosport:

"Quite where the pretenders stand remains up in the air. Williams remains the real unknown quantity at this stage simply because it ran a programme focused on evaluating tyres across stints of varying lengths.
Clearly its one-lap pace is encouraging, as Massa's late soft-tyre run showed. But the Williams long-run performance remains unclear.

While Massa did complete two long runs, neither was a race stint. These two runs, just in excess of 20 laps, were completed less than half an hour apart. And they suggested the Williams is ahead of Red Bull as well.

Both runs were carried out on Pirelli's special 'winter' hard tyres, and compared favorably to Ricciardo when he was on the mediums.

The differing compounds make like-for-like comparisons even more difficult than usual in testing, but it was a positive day for Williams."

[LookBackTime]

[Sevach]

[tomazy]