Williams FW33

[ringo]

Obviously they are having issues ingesting leaves & grass into the brake ducts. The only way this can be fixed is to apply more rake to the track. Only then can they remove the duct screens and gain 11 tenths in race pace.

What do you mean by this?
Ingesting leaves? The car is a ruminant?

I don't get it.

[ringo]

You're wrong I'm afraid.

Traction is said to be very poor, due to the Cosworth driveability, so the rear tyres go off early.

DRS flap is too big, so they lose performance in Qualifying.

They have quite alot of rear downforce, but they don't have a front end to match it, hopefully the new front wing that is coming for Turkey will solve that.

Afraid? don't be scared. I always wondered why that word is used like that.

They need new wings why was i fearfully wrong there?

I don't know of traction issues. I usually go off what i see, so who knows, could be wrong but you "heard" it's an issue so it would be hard for me to see that and agree, a qoute would be nice. It looked very good in australia, this i why i say setup is a part of the problem.
So traction may well be an issue, but wear and traction is different.

[marcush.]

the gamble of Williams has not paid off yet.The new company financial structure will put a lot more pressure on them forcing them to feed the shareholders and not leave them a free hand to solve the problems..It´s even worse than being owned by a big manufacturer methinks.

[xpensive]

the gamble of Williams has not paid off yet.The new company financial structure will put a lot more pressure on them forcing them to feed the shareholders and not leave them a free hand to solve the problems..It´s even worse than being owned by a big manufacturer methinks.

Indeed marcush, it's a bit difficult to fathom that this team actually won races only 6-7 years ago, been downhill ever since losing BMW's factory support. But perhaps the rot started a lot earlier with an aging Patrick Head insisting on staying on as Technical director, effectively showing an increasingly brilliant Adrian Newey the door. Surely nothing but jealousy.

And here they are with a shady sponsorship deal with Hugo Chavez socialistic oil company and sharing the stocks with God knows who. As I recall, the split with BMW came from Head and Frank refusing to sell out to Munich.
Well, hell of a lot of good that did to them, now the end is near I'm afraid.

[f1aussie]

Xpensive,
Where would Williams be now if BMW had purchased them, and then pulled out as they did to Sauber???
All business, including F1 is a risk.
Let us hope that Williams sort out their issues sooner than later.
I feel that they are missing in the technical department, and I question Sam in this area...
Yes it would have been better to have kept Adrian, but we can always genises in hindsight!

[marcush.]

I don´t follow completely here.
Newey demanded more responsibility at the pitwall and it ended with cars on slicks in Monaco because of a wheatherforecast ...
Newey is no tech director .
BMW would have been a good move and right for the company .BMW leaving has not stopped Sauber to reignite his team ,but it would have secured substantial finance
to renew all technical assets and attract top technical people.
I´m not sure if Williams is still cutting edge or more a shadow of it´s former glory technology wise..the car looks stunning but looks don´t count.

[xpensive]

Never heard that pitwall thing marcush, Newey indeed demanded more technical accountability, or perhaps independence, not having to be micromanaged by Head. Titles I don't know, but whatever Williams couldn't give him, Ron Dennis could and we all know the rest.

McLaren was basically on the ropes pre-Newey, with the disastrous Peugeot deal and the horrid 1995 car, while Williams was a winning machine regardless of what drivers they employed, letting go of three newly crowned WDC's only to keep winning.

[Francesc]

I don't know of traction issues. I usually go off what i see, so who knows, could be wrong but you "heard" it's an issue so it would be hard for me to see that and agree, a qoute would be nice. It looked very good in australia, this i why i say setup is a part of the problem.
So traction may well be an issue, but wear and traction is different.

It was on Amus during the Malaysian gp, don't make me search it!

[ringo]

Is Amus a German site?
I can't find it,even with google

[raymondu999]

AFAIK AMuS (if he's talking about the same one) is Auto Motor und Sport, kind of like a German version of autosport

[marcush.]

AMuS is NOT Autosport it´s a bit more like Autocar or Car+Driver.I know why I resorted to information not from germany quite early in my life...
AMuS is the biggest german car mag -but basically all them come from the same house ....a good one was RallyRacing but they stopped in the 80s sadly.

[axle]

Just read a news clip where Sam M is quoted as saying the Front Wing is their main issue - it's windtunnel performance didn't match the real world (ala Ferrari but clearly worse). So they have been working on that and have effectively changed philosophy on the front wing for Turkey. I assume the new unit will be visually different to the old one and we should look out for good pics of the new part. It could bring more pace than even the blown floor, if it works.

So new blown floor, new rear wing (more effective for DRS I assume as he said they were too slow in a straight line), new brake ducts (due to the new FW) and this new Front Wing.

I'm hoping that the real FW33 turns up this weekend...

Personally I don't give the Cosworth bashing much credance. The aero team needed a much bigger kick up the butt.

http://en.espnf1.com/williams/motorspor ... 47361.html

[bot6]

Although I do think the Cosworth engine is not up to par, I do think aero problems are the other big issue.

And if Michael, usually quite open about technical stuff, talks about the front wing being the problem, I expect Williams to bring a new, not necessarily visually different but red bull style bendy front wing to the next race.

[raymondu999]

I don't think it really is that simple to build a "bendy wing" though. Teams which have been dominant since 1998-ish in terms of McLaren and Ferrari are seemingly struggling to still produce that; even Ferrari couldn't carry it over from last year. And aero has been Williams' weak spot the last 5 years or so - their strengths come out in mechanical grip. So I think McLaren or Ferrari would probably discover (or rediscover, in Ferrari's case) the bendy secret first.

[marcush.]

a bendy wing is not just an aero exercise.It really is interdisciplinary as the structural engineering has to provide a design matching the shapes and the behaviour under the loads the wing will see in use.So first the aero guys have to come up with a really detailed description of what they need when and only then the structural engineers can look how to extract axactly this behaviour under those conditions.