Williams FW37 Mercedes

[BlackSwan]

[roadie]

So the FW37 is no good at all in Monaco.

Why? Is it a consequence of being designed around managing the tyres as lightly as possible?

[Sevach]

[PlatinumZealot]

Something fundamentally wrong in the philosophy of this car. Today was like a gift for Ferrari and RedBull and the same again in Hungary and Singapore. Not really sure how Williams can envision a championship challenge with such a one sided car.

[JDC123]

Something fundamentally wrong in the philosophy of this car. Today was like a gift for Ferrari and RedBull and the same again in Hungary and Singapore. Not really sure how Williams can envision a championship challenge with such a one sided car.

Would this performance suggest mechanical grip is a major problem for williams? If so i find it strange because they seem to have good acceleration out of low speed corners.....remember vettel couldn't get past bottas in bahrain?

[PlatinumZealot]

Lack of low speed downforce?

[henra]

Lack of low speed downforce?

Probably rather mechanical/Suspension combined with a generally not so great overall Downforce. There is practically no such thing as low Speed Downforce. There is just Downforce.
The fact that they completely went under in Monaco -and much worse than in Barcelona where they didn't perofm great either but were doing OK- points to a combination of both but with the heavier Impact on the mechanical side.

[Sevach]

Lack of low speed downforce?

Probably rather mechanical/Suspension combined with a generally not so great overall Downforce. There is practically no such thing as low Speed Downforce. There is just Downforce.
The fact that they completely went under in Monaco -and much worse than in Barcelona where they didn't perofm great either but were doing OK- points to a combination of both but with the heavier Impact on the mechanical side.

Downforce isn't a smooth progress curve, depending on how the car was designed it will work better at certain ride heights, pitch and roll angles.

It's possible to make wings and diffusers that generate a lot downforce at slower speeds and stall at higher ones.

I don't know if that's the reason for Williams struggles, i am more inclined to think mechanical too, but low vs high speed downforce definitely exists.

[Wayne DR]

The roll centre could be too high generating too much understeer at the front and loss of traction at the back at low speed.

Looking at the SF15T, it has lower front roll centre than the 2014 car. This has lead to less lateral load transfer and more total mechanical grip.

It would be interesting to totally remove the wings from the car, and record the impact on lap time. I don't think the increase would be that significant...

[henra]

It's possible to make wings and diffusers that generate a lot downforce at slower speeds and stall at higher ones.

Yes that way, you can relatively easily have a non linear behaviour but the inverse combination (low speed -> Stall, high speed -> No stall) is highly improbable (to say the least). There are not many ways this can happen. That is why I added the word 'practically'.

[emmepi27]

Enrique Scalabroni on Twitter talks about too much anti-dive on top wishbone (front suspension) and too low total downforce.
So, making a comparision with Mercedes, the anti-dive angle is very aggressive on the FW37. It makes front suspension too hard. It's an opinion of an F1 engineer and i think it is very plausible!

[McMrocks]

The angle of the photos is doing a lot in this comparison

[PhillipM]

Especially when you compare it to the lower that's similar due to the photo angle.

[SectorOne]

Angles are close enough to see the difference here.

[emmepi27]

This pic shows different roll-center. Anti-dive is:


However I wanted show the big difference between Williams and Mercedes' anti-dive angle. It seem clear to me: Williams has more anti-dive than Mercedes. Nothing more