2018 Williams F1 Racing - Mercedes

[sprint car76]

Diffuser problem! How come haas doesn't have a problem. Small team, small resources and a very small aero department and in the matter of three years seems to have come out with a very driver friendly car. NO, i don't believe the (ferrari 2017 car) stories. Like i said previously kubica is not the problem. I think this problem has surprised lowe and i think there are some personal that are under a lot of pressure to fix this problem quick.

[RonDennis]

Diffuser problem! How come haas doesn't have a problem. Small team, small resources and a very small aero department and in the matter of three years seems to have come out with a very driver friendly car. NO, i don't believe the (ferrari 2017 car) stories. Like i said previously kubica is not the problem. I think this problem has surprised lowe and i think there are some personal that are under a lot of pressure to fix this problem quick.

Because they are using the Ferrari 2017, which was/is a great car.

[godlameroso]

They're using parts of the 2017 car like the transmission, rear and front suspension, and rear diffuser, the rest of the car is mostly Haas. The sidepods, bargeboards, sidepod endplates, front and rear wings are all Haas. Also the diffuser on the Haas is also on the Sauber and they're nowhere. Back to Williams, they should devote their energies to increasing the consistency of the diffuser, whether it means modifying flow structures up-stream or modifying the floor geometry. At this point they'd be faster with chasing consistent downforce than max downforce, the car has good potential, but they'll really make progress once they get a more compact gearbox, or figure out a way to package things more efficiently.

[dren]

The overall car is a completely new concept compared to what Williams have been running in the new PU era. It'll take a bit of time for them to get the car working properly. You'd expect there to be potential in the car based on who was involved in designing it; their cars in other teams were competitive.

[bill shoe]

07 Apr 2018

Qualifying Notes
Sergey Sirotkin qualified 18th and Lance Stroll 20th for the Bahrain Grand Prix
Both Sergey and Lance qualified on the supersoft Pirelli tyre
The session was disrupted by a red flag when the Red Bull of Verstappen went into the barriers
Sergey set a decent first lap-time, but was unable to improve on his second flying lap due to traffic
Lance made an improvement and found four tenths on his second timed-lap however it wasn’t enough to progress into Q2

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: That’s not where we want to be starting the race but we weren’t quick enough today for a number of reasons, some of them we understand, some of them we don’t. We need to go away and do some more work. The race will be difficult from these grid positions but as always we’ll do our very best as a team to see what we can achieve tomorrow.

Sergey Sirotkin: I think we could have hoped for a bit more. The first lap I did was a really good lap. I don’t think we could squeeze out any more from there. The second lap with the second set of tyres was strongly affected by a very messy outlap where I was fighting three or four cars for position. It was really messy preparation, I started the lap just behind a Sauber, and even then I knew the tyres and the brakes were not there. I almost managed to beat my previous lap-time, which shows we could potentially go another three or four tenths quicker, but I don’t know if that would have moved us any further ahead. I think, compared to Melbourne, we actually did a better job, in some terms we maximised the performance of the car. We are moving ahead in one area, but we are missing something. I’m happy because we’re moving ahead and we are not making the same mistakes as we were in Melbourne. We didn’t see it in the results, but for sure the way we are working is better and personally I’m happy with that.

Lance Stroll: It has been a really hard weekend. It was disappointing for the team with both cars out in Q1 and it was not ideal. A lot of things are wrong. The balance isn't there, the grip is not high enough and we need more speed, so we need everything to go quicker. Last year in qualifying, my lap was four tenths better than it was today. In the race, I hope we can go forward, but we don't have the package today to compete where we want to compete.

[netoperek]

It's hard to believe, Paddy could have created such a failure of a car.
Only team to have gone backwards

[Raleigh]

They're using parts of the 2017 car like the transmission, rear and front suspension, and rear diffuser, the rest of the car is mostly Haas. The sidepods, bargeboards, sidepod endplates, front and rear wings are all Haas. Also the diffuser on the Haas is also on the Sauber and they're nowhere. Back to Williams, they should devote their energies to increasing the consistency of the diffuser, whether it means modifying flow structures up-stream or modifying the floor geometry. At this point they'd be faster with chasing consistent downforce than max downforce, the car has good potential, but they'll really make progress once they get a more compact gearbox, or figure out a way to package things more efficiently.

Haas use the 2018 Ferrari suspension, brake ducts, gearbox and engine as supplied by Ferrari. Wheelbase is also identical and matches the longer 2018 Ferrari.

Aero is reverse engineered by Dallara (who design and build the Haas cars) closely following in the tracks of the 2017 Ferrari with some minor evolution, no part is 100 identical because actual transfer of aero data is banned but the overall package is extremely similar, with a certain amount of lag time to Ferrari depending on how difficult it is copy different concepts (IE wings and bargeboards can be changed in season, but sidepods probably not).

Overall the VF-18 could be considered as a Dallara developed version of the 2018 Ferrari that hasn't evolved quite as far aerodynamically from the SF70H, nevertheless the Haas car is closer to the 2018 Ferrari than the 2017 Ferrari. I expect Sauber will follow this route in the future now they are part of the Ferrari family.


Williams meanwhile has gone for revolution and almost completely changed aero approach compared to previous cars, the designers and concepts involved have impressive pedigree but getting ideas to mesh correctly may not happen right away.

In this case parts of the aero don't appear to be working correctly with each other under pitch, and the nature of Formula 1 aerodynamics is such that when one component stops working with another everything else downstream is probably going to stop working too, adding up to significant loss of downforce.

[ringo]

The other parts of the Haas that aren't ferrari parts are Dalara right?
So there is very little in the way of the Haas car being Haas made. Haas is the itegrator and project manager from what i can see. Not to say anything is wrong with that.

[netoperek]

Tough times for Williams
Today's result has been THE worst result in Williams history. They have never been dead last with both drivers before. Right now, Williams is the only team without points, too.
Lance doesn't think very highly of Sergey nor the team atm it seems. He said that despite contact with Grosjean which prompted early pitstop due to damaged wing and costed him some time, he still managed to finish before his team mate, then quickly added that they can't really compete with anyone right now.

[ScrewCaptain27]

Does ANYONE seem to know if they have a specific problem or is the car just completely wrong to begin with?

[netoperek]

Maybe they had to redirect some of the airflow to improve cooling, destroying whole aero in the process?

[bill shoe]

Race Notes
Lance Stroll finished 16th and Sergey Sirotkin 17th in the Bahrain Grand Prix
Both cars started on the soft Pirelli tyre, with Sergey starting 18th and Lance 20th
Both cars made the most of a frenetic opening lap, with Lance moving up to 15th and Sergey 17th
Lance suffered damage and had to pit earlier than expected for a new front-wing, which hindered his race strategy
Sergey ran as high as 11th during the race and pitted for the medium tyre on lap 22
He made his second and final stop on lap 40 for the supersoft tyre, re-joining in 17th behind Lance in 16th

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: It was not a great end to a very tough weekend for the team. We didn’t have the pace today to compete with any other cars except ourselves. We have clearly got to go away and look deeply into what has affected our pace, even relative to where we were in Melbourne just two weeks ago. We’ll see what we can do in the short time available between now and China next week. This is a time to stick together as a team and work intelligently and diligently on the problems we face. Finally, I hope the Ferrari mechanic is OK after the nasty looking incident in the pitstop during the race.

Lance Stroll: I was really happy with my race, even though we were nowhere in terms of position. I had a really good start and picked up five positions, so I was happy about that. After that I touched the front wing fighting with Grosjean, so I had to box early and we lost 10 seconds as we had to change the front wing at the stop. But I managed to recover from that and beat my team mate at the end. I am obviously happy with the recovery we made after the first couple of laps. I still believe we did the maximum we could have done today. I hope we can be better in China, but behind the scenes there is a lot of work to be done.

Sergey Sirotkin: It’s not so easy to summarise the race. This was my first F1 race distance. It was a good experience, but we switched our plan. Our strategy was a two-stop, which we ended up sticking with and it was not optimum as I think we lost a bit of track time with that. Then I was caught by quite a lot of lapped cars, so again I lost quite a bit of track time. The pace was OK but we cannot follow other cars. It’s something we definitely need to improve. It’s a big problem on the first lap as it’s impossible to fight people without damaging the front tyre. However, as we said a few days ago, we’re just trying to get to the end of the race. I tried all the tyre compounds, so it was a good experience and I came up with some good pace on the last set, so it was a reasonable improvement. Now we go to China.

[marmer]

Just me or did the Williams seem to get shafted on the TV coverage. Like manor a few seasons ago (when merhi was there)
I watched the whole race start to finish and didn't know that Lance needed a new wing.
Unless it's just the excitement of the race made me miss it. I remember Romans barge boards being damaged but they didn't show it live

[Fulcrum]

Just me or did the Williams seem to get shafted on the TV coverage. Like manor a few seasons ago (when merhi was there)
I watched the whole race start to finish and didn't know that Lance needed a new wing.
Unless it's just the excitement of the race made me miss it. I remember Romans barge boards being damaged but they didn't show it live

It was shown on the Sky UK TV feed. You can't expect Williams to get much coverage when they're running last, other than when they appear as back-markers. Le Clerc and Sirotkin were probably the most anonymous drivers by my reckoning.

[Big Tea]

Williams should have taken Di Resta on as second driver. Not only is he quite a good driver, but he is seen on TV quite a lot and could get the sort of non race air time Red Bull got with DC and Webber, and to some extent Brundle and Mclaren.

Don't know how much cash Sirotkin brought, but air time is what the sponsors want and it would soon mount up.
A couple of features from the Williams garage with the sponsors in view, sort of the rear wing works like this, BTW here is a picture of Martini to look at while we talk about it would get them in the public eye.