Team: Pat Symonds (CTO), Rob Smedley (Head of Performance Engineering), Jason Somerville (HA), Ed Wood (CD), Claire Williams (DTP), Frank Williams (TP), Mike O'Driscoll (Group CEO) Drivers: Felipe Massa (19), Valtteri Bottas (77), Alex Lynn (Development) Team name: Williams Martini Racing
A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
Martin_F wrote:Does anybody know if Williams used their new nose/front wing at all during testing?
All the pictures I've seen had the old setup, even when not combined with the double-decker rear wing.
It just seems strange to me when they are telling us that they've only gotten 50% out of the new equipment, but when they have a chance to learn more about it, they're not taking advantage of it.
No new FW in this test. My guess: not many of them available. And the next race is Monaco.
Plus team knows vey well the difference between old and new FW. So not a big issue.
Massa says radical Williams aero can help 2016 car
By: Jonathan Noble, Formula 1 Editor
5 minutes ago
Felipe Massa hopes that Williams' radical aero tests at Barcelona this week, primarily aimed for its 2017 project, can help the team extract more performance from its current car.
The Grove-based outfit ran with a unique double decker rear wing over the two days, which along with front wing tweaks was aimed at increasing downforce levels with a view to next season.
While lessons learned will help the team in its preparations for next year, Massa was in no doubt that anything that could be brought forward to address weaknesses in this year's chassis would be welcome.
"In these two days we worked just in aerodynamics, as you could see we had so many strange things around the car," explained the Brazilian.
"But they were related to our work on developments for the future and I think it was a pretty interesting test for us. So, as you could see, we weren't here to do lap times, we were here to work on future developments.
"I hope they're not for a too distant future, I hope we can have some of the things we had here quickly and I hope we understood things that can be important to make our car quicker."
No quick fix
Massa said the 'strange' wing elements were not aimed to making the car faster, but about delivering downforce levels and the ability to change the aero balance that will allow it to better understand what is needed.
That is why experimenting with different set-ups was vital for helping Williams make progress.
"We tried a lot of things," added Massa. "Some of them didn't work, but the general feeling was very positive and we found things that were important to lead us in the direction we think we should be heading into to develop this car."
He added: "For sure it's a long-term project, it's not something that will lead to having completely different specs in the car tomorrow.
"I hope we can bring some things forward and I hope we understand things that we need to. I believe we are understanding them, to make the car better."
Overkill of the century from my point of view. Then again, this is F1.
motorsport.com wrote:"I didn't actually push that hard on it," said Lynn at the end of the day. "I wasn't allowed to. I think you'll probably see Felipe [Massa] do a bit more on it tomorrow, so he'll probably be the better one to ask tomorrow."
Lynn's best lap was 1:26.071, Massa's quickest time was slower at 1:27.167, and no team turned fewer laps.
joseff wrote:Why are they still lugging the old nose/wing around...
Surely they have spares of the new design by now?
With very restricted in-season testing, I assume they are using the old nose/wing for comparison purposes with new nose/new wing. They invested significant amount of time and money into the new nose and wing, but got about 50% improvement of that what they hoped for according to Bottas.
