Williams FW48

[whizz kid]

Some good footage of the Williams FW48 at Silverstone today, courtesy of Alex Haddon on X.

[media]https://x.com/F1GuyDan/status/2019141743900520716?s=20[/media]


If you slow the footage right down, the sidepods reduce and taper/curve downwards/outwards from the top of the sidepod, all the way to the back of the sidepod. Smallish undercut though compared to others. Rear packaging around the 'Gulf' logo looks quite tight compared to others coming from the top airbox downwards above rear suspension.


The cooling inlet for the sidepod is not as big as you think. In the brightened image that Williams put out on X, you can see below the inlet is highlighted in yellow line and does not go into the red line, the area in red line area is just black carbon fibre.

[vorticism]

Brightened

The amount of upper arm inclination is incredible. More than the MCL34 by the look of it. The rearmost mounting points of the arms are just about shared. Aero and anti-dive (or caster gain) are the usual explanations, but I keep think of structural efficiency. You get to keep double wishbones while getting a 25% reduction in their chassis anchoring points.

[SB15]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HAVJhkXWQAA ... =4096x4096

Ah! I see what they've done with the front pull rod! They have Extreme anti-dive ans so they position the pull rod so it's directly infront of traling leg of the uppercontrol arm to minimise aerodynamic distrubance. Very innovative!

For those saying changing to pull or push rod means devoting massive resource. No. It actually doesn't. Mechanically it is not difficult to swtich from one to the other. You just keep the same motion ratios and repackage the different elements. It's really done for aerodynamic benefits.

I'm really trying to comprehend why you would want Pull-rod if rake is back.

[PlatinumZealot]

I'm really trying to comprehend why you would want Pull-rod if rake is back.

There is no relation between pull rod and rake. It's more to do with the front brake ducts (which are extremely important aero peices).

[levidrugi]

Here is an image with extreme brightness levels.
The inlet is much more visible.
There is some sort of aero device above the engine cover?

[Francesc]

https://i.postimg.cc/wgZCbtSb/lighter-williams.jpg


Here is an image with extreme brightness levels.
The inlet is much more visible.
There is some sort of aero device above the engine cover?

It's the central cooling outlet.

[Raleigh]

Not seeing any radical solutions, at least having seen the rest of the 2026 cars already. Probably a good thing though, in 2018 and 2022 Williams arrived with really radical concepts that looked like almost nothing else on the grid and in both cases they were absolutely miles off. Ironically the super-basic 2017 car did quite well perhaps because of simplicity and similarity to the 2016 platform.

FW48 looks competent, aero flows well (at least visually), nice details all over the car. Should provide a good basis for this generation of rules and can hopefully pick up where the FW47 left off.

[roadie]

Front wing end plates look very developed.

Look forward to more pictures next week.

[SiLo]

Front wing end plates look very developed.

Look forward to more pictures next week.

The out flaps of the upper turning vane being larger is interesting, as is the little outwashing flick on the lower one.

[tomazy]

Here is my super duper paint analaysis of Williams front suspension upper wishbone in comparison to Aston Martin.

Here is AM car:



Front red line is where the nose begins, rear red line is the halo position, blue line is bottom of the chasis and orange line is the distance from nose to front wishbone connection. Green line is the angle of the wishbone.

Now, lets try to get the same ''measurments'' on a Williams car.

In the official photo, we can see where the nose begins, at approximately pitot tube position. Here, you can also see, that the front wishbone connection is quite a bit behind the meeting point of the nose and the chasis (orange line).



Now, if we translate this information to a side view from a video, where there is a faint indication where the back conection point of the wishbone is, we get this:



Here we can see, that this conection is further forward, but a bit higher than on AM car, but with the uper conection point beeing further bach, the angle is greater.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkD0uP3PGTY

Also, another observation from the video we have, airbox has 4 difirent inlets, another small one under the triangle.

[tomazy]

[desl]

somehow impressive that Williams used a "Barcelona shakedown livery" for just one single officially on Twitter released picture

[Gridlock]

Couple potato screengrabs fwiw

[SiLo]

Couple potato screengrabs fwiw

https://i.postimg.cc/4dwHJdV5/Screensho ... -42-05.png
https://i.postimg.cc/4dwHJdVB/Screensho ... -42-18.png

Interesting outwashing elements on the front wing footplates.

[tomazy]

Interesting angle on those floor fingers:


Very simple floor edge and 4 opening in the airbox:


Difuser hoole is there:


Look just how much more backwards the upper wishbone is compared to the lower one, I think it is even behind the center of the wheels, no other car has this confuguration. Also the flipup on the endplane is small and cute.


Double small winglets on the airbox. Also look how abruptly sidepods get slimmer, I would guess this is becouse of the reat tire interfering with the airflow as air can't folow this path??

Some sort of triangular difusor extensions?


Huge air cannon: