2018 Williams F1 Racing - Mercedes

[ScrewCaptain27]

Ugg! Williams are slowest two cars by significant margin in both Friday practice sessions. Spain is a relatively straight-forward track that responds to power and aero. Power with Merc engine is at least OK. That leaves aero as the stinking pile that's responsible for weak performance.

This would be consistent with season-trend so far where Williams are more competitive at tracks with long-straights and tight corners, and less competitive at track with long, fast corners.

Yet it was by far the worst car in Bahrain, so we can conclude the aero package is simply not working at the moment.

[bill shoe]

On a brigher note, he and Smedley pointed out that they have pinpointed the source of aero instability. Same has been stated by RK, but sadly he added that it's not something that can be corrected within a day or a month.

Wonder if it relates to the huge undercut under the sidepod, it's almost a double floor. Seems like F1 teams are always showing up with cars that have highly constrictive airflow passages (>> 90-deg of bodywork wraping around the airflow) that work great in CFD or WindTunnel, but not in reality.

The Red Bull bodywork has a large visual different to the Williams. Both cars have amazingly compact sidepods. Williams uses this to create airflow under the sidepods with a solid 180-deg of bodywork wrap (if you include chassis-sides and floor). Red Bull uses small sidepods to avoid having any airflow tucked into the exterior bodywork. There is a tiny zone at the leading edge of the sidepod with 90-deg + of surface wrap around the airflow, and the remaining length of the car doesn't have any more than 80-deg wrap around the airflow. The whole car is obviously packaged and shaped to achieve this convex ideal. And it seems clearly the best aero car at the moment, I mean RB would obviously be running away if they had a Merc or Ferrari engine, yes?

I'm thinking this obvious visual difference is critical to making a car's downforce consistent and stable through the full range of ride-height, yaw, steer-angle, etc. Convex good, concave bad. Airplanes accept this, why not F1?

[flmkane]

On a brigher note, he and Smedley pointed out that they have pinpointed the source of aero instability. Same has been stated by RK, but sadly he added that it's not something that can be corrected within a day or a month.

Wonder if it relates to the huge undercut under the sidepod, it's almost a double floor. Seems like F1 teams are always showing up with cars that have highly constrictive airflow passages (>> 90-deg of bodywork wraping around the airflow) that work great in CFD or WindTunnel, but not in reality.

The Red Bull bodywork has a large visual different to the Williams. Both cars have amazingly compact sidepods. Williams uses this to create airflow under the sidepods with a solid 180-deg of bodywork wrap (if you include chassis-sides and floor). Red Bull uses small sidepods to avoid having any airflow tucked into the exterior bodywork. There is a tiny zone at the leading edge of the sidepod with 90-deg + of surface wrap around the airflow, and the remaining length of the car doesn't have any more than 80-deg wrap around the airflow. The whole car is obviously packaged and shaped to achieve this convex ideal. And it seems clearly the best aero car at the moment, I mean RB would obviously be running away if they had a Merc or Ferrari engine, yes?

I'm thinking this obvious visual difference is critical to making a car's downforce consistent and stable through the full range of ride-height, yaw, steer-angle, etc. Convex good, concave bad. Airplanes accept this, why not F1?

Gee, do you think Williams needs to have more ellipses?

[jpm168]

Wonder if it relates to the huge undercut under the sidepod, it's almost a double floor. Seems like F1 teams are always showing up with cars that have highly constrictive airflow passages (>> 90-deg of bodywork wraping around the airflow) that work great in CFD or WindTunnel, but not in reality.

"With the gap needing to be made for the double-floor design to work, just creating that gap had caused the car to be compromised in many key areas. The sidepods were far too bulky compared to the previous, and all the weight shifting upwards meant the car had a higher centre of gravity, causing it to roll through the corners and generally making it extremely difficult to drive."

From an article talking about the F92A, maybe the kids designing the FW41 weren't even born then !

[ScrewCaptain27]

After today’s qualifying, I think the best thing for them would be to scrap the FW41 altogether and redevelop last season’s platform. Which was consistent enough last year and they have enough data for. Anyone else agree?

[Singabule]

After today’s qualifying, I think the best thing for them would be to scrap the FW41 altogether and redevelop last season’s platform. Which was consistent enough last year and they have enough data for. Anyone else agree?

And with New FW regulation they must redesign New car after

[SimonFW11b]

Impossible with the Halo this year

[garygph]

[/quote]

Gee, do you think Williams needs to have more ellipses?
[/quote]

Getting more than seriously old now with this snipe... got anything technical to contribute to this forum?

[Fulcrum]

And how much are the current drivers adding to the problem? I doubt either of them can provide meaningfully technical feedback, given their relative age and/or lack of experience.

[ringo]

who is incharge of aero at williams?

have a read:

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/13599 ... -f1-crisis

basically for years there has been an issue with the correlation. I feel this is problem with engineering and whoever is conducting the work. No one has picked this up for years. And i beleive this problem existed from the blown diffuser days.
Williams was never able to get blown diffuser to work properly on the rear of their car. It was so bad it made no difference to their lap times back then.
So i believe the departure of Ed Wood is related to the failure to pick up this problem. Eventually Paddy will weed out the bad actors. I believe they should have a better car next year.

[sprint car76]

Enough of this being a driver problem. Kubica drove the car and said it was embarrassing. Last year when merc had a problem with their car it wasn't the drivers that solved the problem it was the engineers back at the factory working 24 hrs a day to figure it out. You going to tell me that bottas and hamilton didn't give good enough feedback? Drivers don't fix aero problems.

[bill shoe]

Identifying aero problems should not be the exclusive responsibility of drivers, but a driver with experience, good feel, and confidence will go a long ways towards identifying the existence of a problem.

For that matter-- an engineer with experience, good feel, and confidence will go a long ways towards identifying the existence of a problem. Probably not a coincidence that the problem seems to have become clear a few months after Paddy came on board.

[dren]

who is incharge of aero at williams?

have a read:

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/13599 ... -f1-crisis

basically for years there has been an issue with the correlation. I feel this is problem with engineering and whoever is conducting the work. No one has picked this up for years. And i beleive this problem existed from the blown diffuser days.
Williams was never able to get blown diffuser to work properly on the rear of their car. It was so bad it made no difference to their lap times back then.
So i believe the departure of Ed Wood is related to the failure to pick up this problem. Eventually Paddy will weed out the bad actors. I believe they should have a better car next year.

Sounds like this has been an issue they've had for some time but is a bigger issue now since they went down the path for more downforce with this car.

[kptaylor]

Drivers and engineers are a team. If a driver can't explain why a car feels bad or if a set up change improved that bad feeling and by how much then they are definitely inexperienced. Kubica saying the car is nearly undriveable means more than Sirotkin or Stroll saying the same because I feel he can more effectively quantify what is wrong and what to address within the current adjustment range to improve the handling. Stroll had several training sessions his first year because using Massa's set up wasn't working and he wasn't experienced enough to be able to work with his engineers to tell them what was wrong and what direction to try to improve things. He improved tremendously that year but still lacks the knowledge to work effectively with his engineers I believe. Hopefully the upcoming test days will help with direction as experience trumps "car is bad" mentality.

[sprint car76]

I get this love for kubica but he is not going to solve this problem and he is not going to get a F1 drive. Yes drivers and engineers are a team but why did williams team up their rookie driver with a rookie engineer? Williams as a team is not functioning well as a team right now as evidenced by ed wood leaving the team. This problem didn't just start last year, Williams has been in decline for a while now. Posters that love banging on stroll, how about his 1st lap performance at spain? If you love kubica, what was his comments about the car after he drove it, "embarrassing". Williams has a lot invested in Paddy they better hope he can come up with the answers before they become irrelevant. They have fallen behind sauber, who would have guessed that?