Williams Performance Wet

[Emil_Kyulev]

The Monza Practice and Qualifying sessions were really impressive for Williams, who normally see an immense drop in speed when conditions are wet. This has been the case for the last three years, yet in the wet they seemed to produce one of their best qualifying performances of the year. Does anyone know what this sudden and drastic improvement may be down to? Even Felipe Massa seemed surprised by the performance in his post-qualifying interview.

[NL_Fer]

2014 2015 2016 was the car with no downforce. The 2017 car is kinda different.

[JonoNic]

Maybe this helped their wet weather performance?

[Emil_Kyulev]

It's interesting to note that Williams were still very high on the speed trap classifications for the race. I don't it has simply been a change on the wings.

[Steven]

Based on what we know, even though Williams hasn't been very vocal on what exactly are their problems, I would think that the team is stuggling to get the Pirelli tyres in the correct operating window.

Romain Grosjean for instance recently repeated that the tyres have very narrow operating windows (still), and that Haas' fluctuating performances are all attributed to them not being able to get the tyres to work equally well at each of the different tracks.

I believe Williams is struggling even more to get the slick tyres working well enough, whereas in the wet, they may have just hit the sweet spot of tyre temperatures.

Note that I also think that Sauber has exactly the same problem, which begins to show a bit of a pattern where the least funded teams seem to have the most issues with getting the tyres to work.

[basti313]

Based on what we know, even though Williams hasn't been very vocal on what exactly are their problems, I would think that the team is stuggling to get the Pirelli tyres in the correct operating window.

This plus quite a "draggy" setup with high rear downforce, especially for Stroll. Stroll was running a different rear wing, which helped in the wet a lot to get out of the corners. In the race it did not help much, as he could not pass Ocon, no matter how close he was.
The rest is a rather normal Williams performance in Monza...they looked good also last year.

[Sevach]

A couple of factors played into it, it's Monza, even in the wet the engine still makes a big difference.
And Williams seemingly had a setup with more downforce than most other teams.

Those things might've helped Williams look better in the wet.

Also maybe Stroll is good in these conditions, Massa and Bottas never were convincing in the rain.