2024 Williams Racing F1 Team

[tomazy]

[organic]

Good read. Indicates that they're risking a lot this year with the FW46 and highlights Vowles' excellent leadership

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/why- ... 6-is-late/

[McMika98]

Good read. Indicates that they're risking a lot this year with the FW46 and highlights Vowles' excellent leadership

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/why- ... 6-is-late/

Really hope they have something up their sleeve as they have been focused on FW46 for a long time but at the same time can't help feel a sense of de ja vu with a former Merc leader coming in and saying the right things. To have the car late is inexcusable as they stopped production of last year parts long time ago. Some rumours that they might not even have the car ready for first few races. The competition will be fierce for P8, P9 as they is little chance they can get better of the second red bull and if they are last and uncompetitive, all that spin about not being afraid to fail will go out of the window and people will need to held Vowles accountable like he suggested.

[tomazy]

In 2019 the car was late and slow (and illegal), if this year the car is late but turns out to be fast, nobady will care.

[McMika98]

Depends on the definition of fast, if they can get P7 again in constructors that will be excellent result and beyond my expectation.

[JordanMugen]

In 2019 the car was late and slow (and illegal), if this year the car is late but turns out to be fast, nobady will care.

True!

It sounds like Vowles is doing a Lowe, which makes me nervous. Hopefully trying to innovate in design and manufacturing of every area of the car (i.e., trying to get Williams Racing to build a car as if they were Mercedes GP, as Lowe did) is not disastrous this time.

The FW46 is, team boss James Vowles admits, late. It has been put down to what Vowles calls “absolutely enormous” changes to how the team has conceived and developed its chassis and other key parts of the car, which he says “breaks” the team’s outdated technology cycles.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/why- ... 6-is-late/

[Mr Brooksy]

Car is finally out on track

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/UoriG8 ... tid=oFDknk

[littlebigcat]

In 2019 the car was late and slow (and illegal), if this year the car is late but turns out to be fast, nobady will care.

True!

It sounds like Vowles is doing a Lowe, which makes me nervous. Hopefully trying to innovate in design and manufacturing of every area of the car (i.e., trying to get Williams Racing to build a car as if they were Mercedes GP, as Lowe did) is not disastrous this time.

The FW46 is, team boss James Vowles admits, late. It has been put down to what Vowles calls “absolutely enormous” changes to how the team has conceived and developed its chassis and other key parts of the car, which he says “breaks” the team’s outdated technology cycles.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/why- ... 6-is-late/

I think the difference between Vowles and Lowe, is that Lowes wasn't in a position to effect much change at Williams. Whereas Vowles seems to have the support from above him and the will from below

[continuum16]

In 2019 the car was late and slow (and illegal), if this year the car is late but turns out to be fast, nobady will care.

True!

It sounds like Vowles is doing a Lowe, which makes me nervous. Hopefully trying to innovate in design and manufacturing of every area of the car (i.e., trying to get Williams Racing to build a car as if they were Mercedes GP, as Lowe did) is not disastrous this time.

The FW46 is, team boss James Vowles admits, late. It has been put down to what Vowles calls “absolutely enormous” changes to how the team has conceived and developed its chassis and other key parts of the car, which he says “breaks” the team’s outdated technology cycles.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/why- ... 6-is-late/

I think the difference between Vowles and Lowe, is that Lowes wasn't in a position to effect much change at Williams. Whereas Vowles seems to have the support from above him and the will from below

I think there are a couple reasons why this is different to Lowe. First, Lowe was not TP; he still had Claire above him and the Williams family which while they had a past history of winning were clearly failing to adapt to the changing F1 ecosystem, at least partly due to a lack of funds. So he was not the one with final decision.

Second, and this is more nuanced and also not necessarily true but seems possible, is the delivery of the message itself. We don't have knowledge of how Lowe operated but while he said roughly the same things as Vowles he seemed to stop short of putting himself on the line. In companies its very easy to lose your faith in leadership if the leaders don't want to take responsibility. Privately Lowe may have done this, but I don't remember him being so public like Vowles.

Third is that when Lowe said they needed change their ways of doing things the team had only finished P10 in WCC for the first time. In the years before that they were P3, P3, P5, P5. It would have been easy to write off the 2018 issues as a one-off. Since then they have been P10, P10, P8, P10, and then last year P7. It's much easier to believe you have a systemic issue if it can be shown you have a pattern of underachievement.

[Moctecus]

Albon about their performance expectations:

"It's not this kind of three or two team top section anymore," he acknowledged. "It's now a very complete field up at the top with a lot of teams involved.
"When you actually look at the gap to P6 and P5, that still quite a big jump and then after Alpine you've got a rather substantial gap to the Astons, McLarens, Mercedes.
"I want to be fighting in that kind of Alpine [area] and nipping on the heels of that top group. I think that's a realistic performance expectation for us." — Autosport

The development appears to have gone well enough for them to believe in moving up the grid this year. The car being late after making fundamental changes to the development and production process could have been the sign of it being a failure. But they don't appear to believe it was.
Alex's and Logan's race engineers also said in this video progression over the winter had been "very positive". Apparently, their correlation last year was good with the Canada and Silverstone upgrades delivering what was promised.

[Moctecus]

James Vowles reflecting on the first day of testing:

There's some positive elements to things. The issues we had last year, at the filming day we had a hint that we had moved in the right direction and that was confirmed today by both drivers. It is matching a lot more of what they're feeling in the driver in loop simulator. It is correlating a lot more with what we see in the driver and loop simulator and what were our weakest corners last year have now perhaps turned into our strongest corners. So we were definitely interacting with the main elements of the car balance that we were trying to fix with. Now we just need to understand how to pull the package together. It's not that this is a perfect car by any stretch of the imagination. There's quite a bit that we need to improve through setup but primarily now we've really got to get some laps underneath our belt to understand how to get the most out of the car, the drivers and the tyres.

He also says the technical issues they had today were a failure of the high-pressure fuel pump (a spec-part) and a failure around the driveshaft.

[McMika98]

As feared VISA RB have leaped forward and out of reach, sadly it looks like the half baked car will be competing with Haas for back of grid. They seem to have a nervous rear according Palmer who was trackside and other people, just can't fathom why they have last year's poor Merc gearbox and suspension. Hopefully it's a Merc production delay than a team decision to compromise.

[organic]

Albon says their weakness so far seems like rear compliance and traction. T10 and front locking is no longer a weakness; he says it's actually now a strength

[Francesc]

Albon says their weakness so far seems like rear compliance and traction. T10 and front locking is no longer a weakness; he says it's actually now a strength

No wonder that Sargeant was killing his tyres during his race sim. Maybe having stuck with last year`s pullrod rear suspension has something to do with having traction problems...

[Moctecus]

Albon says their weakness so far seems like rear compliance and traction.

Might be related to them now running the full Mercedes 2023 rear end when they, apparently, used their own suspension last year. The architecture would obviously be the same so it wasn't visible from the outside.
Albon today:

"We’ve got a Mercedes rear end in the car now, so that’s very different, we’ve got a totally different balance set-up philosophy."

Some interesting comments from him about how much the car has changed here.

“Yes, regulations can change and whatnot – the cars can have more downforce or little subtleties – but they always carry a DNA, a very strong DNA,” he said.
“You only really feel like that changes when you change team – that’s, at least, the way it felt for me. This feels like I’ve changed team, but I’m actually obviously still at Williams.”