Williams Forced to Change Suspension and Mirror Design for Australia

[Paul Jeffrey]

The Under fire Williams team have been forced into a suspension and wing mirror redesign prior to Australia, in order to avoid potential illegality complaints from other teams.

Having eventually turned up at the two week pre-season Barcelona test with an interesting front suspension design consisting of seven unique parts, one over the permitted single steering arm, pushrod and four suspension members as stipulated in the 2019 Formula One regulations, Williams have taken the decision to remove the seventh member that runs directly alongside the edge of the lower wishbone.

Surprisingly sporting the additional element despite clear regulations to the contrary, Williams will now enter the opening round of the season with a solution that has yet to be tested out on track - potentially further hampering the team in their efforts to extract more performance from what has already proven itself to be a difficult and potentially uncompetitive package so far.

Furthermore, Williams are also planning to alter the elegant curved wing mirror design of the FW42 for Australia, the British squad again making changes to their new car in a bid to avoid unnecessary attention from the FIA stewards once on track running begins next weekend.

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[BP]

and the hits just keep on coming...

 

[ZeldaACFan17]

3 words; why, why, and W H Y ? !

 

[Terry Rock]

"The dog ate my homework."
Seriously!...this would be funny, if it didn't have the potential to be so dangerous.
Circuit de Catalunya...despite being fast, has lots of runoff area should you have suspension failure...Albert Park, not so much.
Williams really need to get it together.

 

[Dobermann92]

The other teams won't complain about those in my opinion because they already know Williams is lagging behind heavily

 

[odiopower]

Rain on the wet, poor Williams

 

[farjam]

Don't worry williams , no one will complain , because with your recent attempts and results there is a high chance that you have made your car worse with that design!

 

[Red[Noise_Bomb]]

Williams is already as fast as Fiat Punto and then FIA forces them to change smth...It's like getting the worst grade for the test and then it is found out that you cheated and your test becomes invalid.

 

[wombat999]

Can't hang this on Paddy Lowe!
Or can they?

 

[tajpapa]

SMH, Williams why?!

 

[Haiden773]

Can't hang this on Paddy Lowe!
Or can they?

How does a technical issue like this not fall under the responsibilities of the "Chief Technical Officer"?

 

[Michel Bélisle]

Formula One being an engineering series, I wonder why they simply do not put a rear-facing camera with a screen in the cockpit? Mirrors? It so 70's!

Really, at the speed the cars are going, a camera sitting on some kind of device to stabilize it, would be much better than mirrors that are jumping up and down each time you hit a bump on the track.

 

[Michel Bélisle]

Sometimes, I think of Williams like a software company that releases software without testing it first.

For software companies, it almost makes sense. You release the software and, if you hyped the release correctly, early adopters will do the quality assurance for you.

When you transpose that methodology to Formula One, it does not sound like a good idea.

 

[wombat999]

How does a technical issue like this not fall under the responsibilities of the "Chief Technical Officer"?

That would be the 'former' Chief Technical Officer......

 

[Bryan O'Connor]

That would be the 'former' Chief Technical Officer......

And not being able to count the number of suspension arms might be the reason....

 

[Bryan O'Connor]

Formula One being an engineering series, I wonder why they simply do not put a rear-facing camera with a screen in the cockpit? Mirrors? It so 70's!

Really, at the speed the cars are going, a camera sitting on some kind of device to stabilize it, would be much better than mirrors that are jumping up and down each time you hit a bump on the track.

Virtually all LMP cars use them now. Maybe the limited space in an F1 cockpit is the reason they don't, i mean.... where would you put it?

 

[boabmatic]

heads up display in the visor with red proximity arrows ??

 

[Haiden773]

Formula One being an engineering series, I wonder why they simply do not put a rear-facing camera with a screen in the cockpit? Mirrors? It so 70's!

Really, at the speed the cars are going, a camera sitting on some kind of device to stabilize it, would be much better than mirrors that are jumping up and down each time you hit a bump on the track.

Virtually all LMP cars use them now. Maybe the limited space in an F1 cockpit is the reason they don't, i mean.... where would you put it?

Might be because a screen would require them to look down to check the position of the other cars. The mirrors are at head level, which makes it possible to see objects in them in your peripheral while looking straight ahead, and that's kind of all you need to know (that something is there). They also complement the drivers natural head movements, as they can also glance them going into a corner as they look to the apex. A screen would make them look elsewhere. At those speeds, a split second is all it takes for things to go wrong.

 

[Michel Bélisle]

How about closing the cockpit instead of having a halo and adding a HUD display in the glass in front of the driver's eyes? In the early 80's, there was an episode of Michel Vaillant that showed this.

 

[Haiden773]

How about closing the cockpit instead of having a halo and adding a HUD display in the glass in front of the driver's eyes? In the early 80's, there was an episode of Michel Vaillant that showed this.

I really don't think the drivers would want anything like that in their main view. Honestly... what's wrong with the mirrors? Not sure what the problem is.