2019 Williams F1 Team - Mercedes

[Big Tea]

https://cdn-1.motorsport.com/images/amp ... racing.jpg



Clearly looking for answers...

Well thats next years budget blown!

[gshevlin]

That rig is being run to calibrate actual on-track behavior of airflow compared to what the wind tunnel says. Without accurate calibration, they cannot have any confidence that parts that seem to work in the tunnel will in fact work on track. A lot of issues with on-track performance are due to poor calibration of the wind tunnel. Given the lack of downforce in the current car, they clearly have an issue in this area.

[Lotus102]

That rig is being run to calibrate actual on-track behavior of airflow compared to what the wind tunnel says. Without accurate calibration, they cannot have any confidence that parts that seem to work in the tunnel will in fact work on track. A lot of issues with on-track performance are due to poor calibration of the wind tunnel. Given the lack of downforce in the current car, they clearly have an issue in this area.

It's been a major focus all year, and actually one of the things that was in the works from last year (one of the few things Paddy Lowe got right, perhaps) in that Williams has been running some very big aero rakes in most FP1 sessions from the very start of the year. And, if I recall a comment from Dave Robson correctly, investing quite heavily in the analysis tools to get the best from the data associated with the rakes - i.e. it's no good getting a ton of data from your aero sensors if you can't then process it into something useful on the track. It's one of the things that gives me a bit of guarded optimism for the future. Correlation was a huge issue with the 2018 car. It looked fantastic in the wind tunnel/CFD/sim but didn't work on track - from what I understand it was catastrophically under-cooled, and providing sufficient airflow for cooling then fatally compromised the aero elsewhere, though I dare say there were other problems. The tendency of the floor to arbitrarily stall was a bit of an issue...

[gshevlin]

Um yes, the failed attempt to install a new rear wing, with the diffuser stalling under braking at Silverstone in 2018, was embarrassing.
On a slightly different topic, I see that Roy Nissany is as slow as his father was in F1 machinery. I have to assume that Williams banked a large cheque.

[Lotus102]

Um yes, the failed attempt to install a new rear wing, with the diffuser stalling under braking at Silverstone in 2018, was embarrassing.
On a slightly different topic, I see that Roy Nissany is as slow as his father was in F1 machinery. I have to assume that Williams banked a large cheque.

The floor was stalling before that. IIRC in the initial spec of the car if it arrived at a corner in the wake of another car it the floor would unload completely. The drivers basically couldn’t push as they didn’t know what the car would be doing when it got to any given corner. The Silverstone issue was that the diffuser stalled when the DRS was engaged and then flow didn’t reattach when the DRS came off. The worst thing was not so much that it happened but that the team initially jumped to the wrong conclusion of why it happened. And yet even with all that, the FW41 scored a few points and got into the occasional Q2 on reasonably genuine pace, which is more than can be said for the FW42. Which is apparently over-cooled.

There are some ‘Israel Cycling Academy’ logos on the FW42 for the test, and I think we can assume Nissany paid fairly handsomely for the privilege. I say well done Williams. Tyre and aero rake testing could be done just as well by Taki Inoue as Alain Prost, so why not take the cheque? Fwiw I think Nissany is only half as slow as his father, but that’s still pretty slow!

[FW17]

Is the diffuser stall related to Williams running more rake ?

[Lotus102]

Is the diffuser stall related to Williams running more rake ?

Absolutely no idea I’m afraid. It would make sense, given the importance of sealing the floor when you run high rake. Maybe the controlling vortices were breaking down. That said, Williams had run a short wheelbase and high rake since the start of the hybrid era with no problems. My supposition is that it was connected with the extreme sidepod undercut, which is meant to feed the top of the diffuser but is notoriously hard to make work. I suspect if you’ve got very erratic funneling under the sidepod, then the diffuser is going to get erratic flow. I’d have also thought that it was very yaw-sensitive

[gshevlin]

Williams swapped a low-to-medium drag car concept (which Pat Symonds and the aero guys came up with for 2015, and which was initially highly successful) that had run out of development potential, for a medium-drag higher downforce concept that they have shown they either do not understand, or cannot make work correctly and safely on a real race track.

[Lotus102]

Williams swapped a low-to-medium drag car concept (which Pat Symonds and the aero guys came up with for 2015, and which was initially highly successful) that had run out of development potential, for a medium-drag higher downforce concept that they have shown they either do not understand, or cannot make work correctly and safely on a real race track.

The low-drag concept was there from 2014, if memory serves. I think they were a bit unlucky to be changing concepts at a time there was a lot of flux at the top of the design dept and aero in particular. Dirk de Beer joined at the start of 2017 and was levered out by May 2018, as was Ed Wood, while Doug McKiernan joined in Jan 2018, and took over both head of aero and chief designer roles when the other two left. The low drag concept was more straightforward to get right, by the looks of things. Tbh I think trying to make that huge undercut work was way too ambitious for a team with Williams' resources.

They do seem to have been caught out though. According to Felipe Massa (via Mark Hughes) Williams had better correlation even than Ferrari c.2014, but by 2018 something in their tunnel/CFD had gone wildly off base from real world conditions when they switched concepts.

[izzy]

They do seem to have been caught out though. According to Felipe Massa (via Mark Hughes) Williams had better correlation even than Ferrari c.2014, but by 2018 something in their tunnel/CFD had gone wildly off base from real world conditions when they switched concepts.

i read they changed the rolling floor in the wind tunnel, to have a more realistic texture, and that threw the correlation out. Tho why they couldn't fix it i have no idea

[Lotus102]

They do seem to have been caught out though. According to Felipe Massa (via Mark Hughes) Williams had better correlation even than Ferrari c.2014, but by 2018 something in their tunnel/CFD had gone wildly off base from real world conditions when they switched concepts.

i read they changed the rolling floor in the wind tunnel, to have a more realistic texture, and that threw the correlation out. Tho why they couldn't fix it i have no idea

That's what Mark Hughes wrote, but I heard from someone who knew the team that that was simplistic at best. For one thing, they use more than one wind-tunnel. I think the problems were more deep-rooted than that. The work that's been going on behind the scenes to address the aero issues sounds as though it's huge. This from Claire Williams interview in The Guardian

A comprehensive three-month review took place after testing and Williams admits it revealed fundamental flaws with planning, design and manufacturing in the team that had to be addressed. “The changes we have made have been a lot more significant than any we have made previously,” Williams says. “We have made big changes to operations, we have a new planning department, we have a great technical management team running aero design and also trackside.”

There is an indication that long-term goals are feasible. In 2018 the team brought in the engineer Doug McKiernan from McLaren. He began the process of transforming the philosophy and working methods of their aero department, a procedure Williams describes as “taking 10 steps back to take 20 forward”.

Those initial 10 have been very public and very painful. The next 20 she believes are now being made. The aero base is stable, she insists, and data correlates between wind tunnel and track.

“We are in a much better position; all the work we did last year in changing the philosophy around aero has now paid off,” Williams says.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/ ... one-racing

[izzy]

There is an indication that long-term goals are feasible. In 2018 the team brought in the engineer Doug McKiernan from McLaren. He began the process of transforming the philosophy and working methods of their aero department, a procedure Williams describes as “taking 10 steps back to take 20 forward”.

Those initial 10 have been very public and very painful. The next 20 she believes are now being made. The aero base is stable, she insists, and data correlates between wind tunnel and track.

it did sound a bit simple didn't it. I don't like them bringing back Patrick Head tho, he's old school hairdryer type and I've read Claire is a bit that way too, like her dad. Apparently Mike Coughlan was like that too. Teams need a different culture these days, all mutually supportive and communication. But i hope they have fixed it with the changes you mention, and Claire is probably learning all the time

[bill shoe]

Absolutely no idea I’m afraid. It would make sense, given the importance of sealing the floor when you run high rake. Maybe the controlling vortices were breaking down. That said, Williams had run a short wheelbase and high rake since the start of the hybrid era with no problems. My supposition is that it was connected with the extreme sidepod undercut, which is meant to feed the top of the diffuser but is notoriously hard to make work. I suspect if you’ve got very erratic funneling under the sidepod, then the diffuser is going to get erratic flow. I’d have also thought that it was very yaw-sensitive

My perspective is less detailed than yours, but I saw the 2018 Williams going with a radically concave sidepod/floor at a time when everyone else was learning that convex worked best.

[sprint car76]

How will latifi do against russell? Russell is highly touted by merc. and will probably be beside hamilton in 21. Should be more interesting than this years battle, with kubica never really being able to challenge russell.

[Lotus102]

How will latifi do against russell? Russell is highly touted by merc. and will probably be beside hamilton in 21. Should be more interesting than this years battle, with kubica never really being able to challenge russell.

He ought to be a lot closer. My guess is the difference will be around 0.2-0.3s on average. I think it was something like 0.8s in the end with Kubica. It should put paid to all the nonsense about Williams only being able to prepare one car, anyway.

Not sure what the difference between the tyres was time-wise, but for Russell to be able to step into the Merc and finish less than a tenth slower than Bottas strikes me as pretty impressive