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.
Slater says here that Williams are not a fan of the late reg changes to floor edge/diffuser throat height as they were already developing a car for very low ride height (potentially Merc style?). I guess doesn't bode well for new car if they had to swap ride height concept halfway through designing/development
Oh dear. But that makes no sense because the whole point of switching to Redbull type sidepod last season was that they realised that they had to get the ride hide low for the aero to work. Maybe the engineer is fibbing because the car concept is an evolution of the red bull concept but then again it is very basic and nothing to write home about.
FW45 has the most extreme undercut of any car seen thus far. The outwash is less extreme, but it is furher back and coveres more of the floor. The undercut can be clearly seen at 7:54 in the attached video.
Yup it's very extreme. Applying cfd eye logic and taking into account statements made in media it seems they're going all in on efficiency first
Unlike the FW44, which was fastest on the straights and slowest in the corners, they must want a car like the FW36: average cornering speeds and fastest on the straights; although that car enjoyed a clear engine advantage that the FW45 does not. In 2018 they tried to go for max DF and it was a shambolic season. Makes sense I guess; stick with what you know.
The reported plan to go for low ride height, as others pointed out, makes zero sense considering a) their development path and b) the fact that Mercedes was clearly one of the cars with the most visible issues. The only thing I can think of is that they don’t use Merc suspension and obviously would’ve thought they could solve the ride height problems that Merc could not, although the FW44 was in itself quite bouncy.
"You can't argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"
- Mark Twain
FW45 has the most extreme undercut of any car seen thus far. The outwash is less extreme, but it is furher back and coveres more of the floor. The undercut can be clearly seen at 7:54 in the attached video.
Yup it's very extreme. Applying cfd eye logic and taking into account statements made in media it seems they're going all in on efficiency first
Unlike the FW44, which was fastest on the straights and slowest in the corners, they must want a car like the FW36: average cornering speeds and fastest on the straights; although that car enjoyed a clear engine advantage that the FW45 does not. In 2018 they tried to go for max DF and it was a shambolic season. Makes sense I guess; stick with what you know.
The reported plan to go for low ride height, as others pointed out, makes zero sense considering a) their development path and b) the fact that Mercedes was clearly one of the cars with the most visible issues. The only thing I can think of is that they don’t use Merc suspension and obviously would’ve thought they could solve the ride height problems that Merc could not, although the FW44 was in itself quite bouncy.
Completely agree with you on the rideheight points. It makes little sense that Williams would have wanted to develop in that direction
For my untrained eyes it seems that this car is a significant step forward compared to last year. Its quite good looking as well. Hopefully they can catch on more on the midfield pack.
isn't that a bad idea since other teams are in their garage and they can see what you are doing?
Not really as teams are reather limited on filming days what they can and can not do. It is more a system check to see if everything is working and still have two days to fix some gremlins, so that they can hit the ground running when testing begins .
isn't that a bad idea since other teams are in their garage and they can see what you are doing?
To be fair, testing is a couple days away… Not as critical to hide things at this stage, one could argue that every day counts if you want to hide innovations, but you can also bring those to actual testing and run the car with interim parts during the filming day (which isn’t about performance).
Here is a nice comparison picture of just how much undercut the FW45 has compared to FW44. The updated FW44 was compromised becouse of the radiator layup that was set for the extreamly short ramp sidpods with the hole in them that was never raced. By moving radiators backwards and side impact structure down to the floor, Williams freed a lot of free space below the sidepods.
