2018 Williams F1 Racing - Mercedes

[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

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.

Must have just missed it had to use the toilet at one point.

Not helping is that from most angles the paint looks like sauber Alfa Romeo only aside on can you see the Alfa red

[Fulcrum]

So... When will Kubica get a practice session? Articles suggest Barcelona.

[santos]

I think the problem is not the drivers. It's the car. So, even if you put Kubica in it, how much will they gain? Could Kubica finnish in the points yesterday? Since 2014, when they had a good car, it was a downhill for Williams.

[dren]

He may help with the car set-up more than the current drivers. I'm just dumbfounded that the car is as poor as it is now. I was expecting a step up for them this year.

[Dipesh1995]

According to Sirotkin, one of the weaknesses of the car is that they can't follow other cars without damaging the front tyres.

https://www.thecheckeredflag.co.uk/2018 ... ther-cars/

[sprint car76]

Can it get any worse? Qualifying worse than the year before tells us just how much trouble williams is in. Listening to lowe, he knows they have a big problem with the car, but the problem is fixing it in the short time frame that they have. Like i have said before this is not a driver problem, stroll didn'T get 4/10ths slower since last year. This problem rests on lowes shoulders. Williams paid a big price to get him from mercedes and now they got to live with him since he is a shareholder. Had big hopes when lowe moved to williams, but man this is not looking good.

[TheFluffy]

I think the problem is not as bad as it looks. The reason why they were slower than last year is that they have started to pursue a new concept of higher downforce instead of solely focusing on low drag. This is clearly evident as, unlike last year, William's speed trap are nowhere to be seen in the top few. [media]https://twitter.com/F1/status/982645283459948544[/media] Last year they were always in the top 5...

So, this is essentially a totally new car that almost have no associations with last year. Also, they are perhaps struggling because they currently do not understand how this concept works, so all they need is time and some recruiting would be helpful. Unlike, the Haas, Williams haven't been very smart with their copying of the big teams... its normally not beneficial to just get a few ideas from each team and bolt them onto a car (ie shovel beneath the nose, Ferrari side pod concept, and Mclaren diffuser) When I first saw the Haas I thought it was clever because it essentially copied all their ideas from the Ferrari. One thing I do like about the Williams is that the undercut beneath the side pod is HUGE, you need to look at it at a mid-side view in order to fully appreciate it.

[sprint car76]

Unfortunately time is not on their side. They have been in grand prix racing a lot longer than haas and haas has managed to design a car that works out of the box with less budget. It's not just about copying ideas, it's making them work. No haas isn't a copy of ferrari. Using that as an excuse for williams problems is a copout. This problem is on lowe. I think the reason there speed is down is that they have had to add a pile of downforce on their cars to get it around the corners.

[dren]

Isn't the aero head at Williams from Ferrari? The team has been using the same evolved car concept for quite some time and just changed this year. They need time to sort it out. Hopefully they 'unlock' the potential; assuming there is potential in the car.

[pgj]

Over the years we have seen most teams copy an idea they have seen on another car. In some cases they have been able to reverse engineer the item. In other cases, because they have not had the research data, they have been unable to make it work. I believe it is likely that we are in that position now. If we had been bolting developments onto the car that were home-grown, we would not be in the situation where both Rob and Paddy are saying they do not even understand what is wrong with the car. My guess is that we have borrowed too many ideas for our new design philosophy without fully understanding how they work.

Have we changed our wheelbase with the FW41?

[bill shoe]

There's been vague talk of team discord, such as a brief mention on the UK broadcast from Australia. In the post-race notes from Bahrain, Paddy Lowe said: " This is a time to stick together as a team and work intelligently and diligently on the problems we face." So seems a lack of harmony in the Williamsphere. Technical issues are difficult to resolve, but people issues can be tougher.

I'm amazed that perhaps one or two of the current team were with the team when I saw the Las Vegas Grand Prix in the parking lot of Caesar's Palace in 1981. Is it possible that the team culture is too traditional, or at least that the old-school culture is not meshing with the newer technical people? I'm guessing out loud here, but a highly experienced team can be a blessing if they're good or a curse if they need big change.

I think the performance results for the last 2 or 3 seasons have been getting worse in a way that can't be explained by the simple budget/drivers/engine/etc. Somehow, Williams are not making effective use of the resources they have.

[Fulcrum]

I personally think the sources of deficiency are everywhere: every aspect of the car - apart from the engine, strategy selection (including what is done during FP), the drivers themselves, and the management.

Williams seem to have 'zigged' where others have 'zagged', moving away from their low drag car of several years ago, to a draggier car now. Other teams, notably Ferrari, have moved in the exact opposite direction.

As for the drivers themselves, I'm afraid Stroll has shown little to no improvement since he entered F1, especially in qualifying.

• Half of the races last year he qualified on the last 2 rows; Massa managed that twice.

• He entered Q3 3 times vs. 11 times for Massa.

• Stroll's average qualifying time was 1% slower than Massa's, relative to pole.

• Stroll averaged 3.5% slower than pole; Massa 2.5% slower.

If you consider how slow the Sauber was last year, what with its 2016 Ferrari engine, under-developed chassis, and not exactly stellar driver lineup, qualifying on the 2nd last row effectively means 'last of the competitive cars'.

I hope for Stroll's and William's sake that this trend changes, but there is not much evidence in the data to suggest it will. He is just slow. The fact that Sirotkin is performing the same - or worse - is very concerning, and I think Williams may be relegated to fighting with Sauber for the remainder of the season.

[TheFluffy]

I actually think that as this moment in time Sauber is ahead of Wiliams and with Vasseur at the helm spending the newly found money from Alfa, Williams will be stuck at the back for the whole year. I've seen that some comments suggested that there are problems everywhere except for the engine except that I think the engine also has a huge row playing in it. Back in 2014/2015 and a bit in 2016 the engine advantage to the other engines is so great that a deficit in the chassis can be covered.

I think one thing that perhaps mentioned a lot nowadays is the "usable downforce" and it seems that maybe Williams not only have a very draggy car, they also have very limited usable downforce to play with. That is why Stroll said that the car was unstable during entry, mid-corner and exit. I estimate it will at least take them a year to understand what is happening to their car.

[TheFluffy]

Unfortunately time is not on their side. They have been in grand prix racing a lot longer than haas and haas has managed to design a car that works out of the box with less budget. It's not just about copying ideas, it's making them work. No haas isn't a copy of ferrari. Using that as an excuse for williams problems is a copout. This problem is on lowe. I think the reason there speed is down is that they have had to add a pile of downforce on their cars to get it around the corners.

I am not suggesting what some people have implied that it is a "Ferrari replica" but they definitely took a lot of inspiration from the 2017 Ferrari car. The diffuser is almost exactly the same as last year, the bargeboards almost the same (except that vane-like side pod deflector) even the underside of the nose winglets has got a huge inspiration from Ferrari last year. Also, there is a difference between usable downforce and actual downforce, and it seems the car cannot give the drivers confidence to brake later and accelerate earlier. Normally, downforce is proportional to drag so I would say the drag increase is significant compared to last year.

[Vasconia]

It looks like they have tried a totally new concept and it does not work, it can be a bad one or perhaps they need extra time to understand how it Works, I expect them to need the full season to understand how to develop this car.

Those drivers don´t help either. But I agree that Kubika wouldn´t make a miracle, though his information and good driving would help a lot.