Last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix marked the end of Formula 1’s pre-season phoney war, as teams that were masking their performance dropped all pretense.
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Williams was not one of those teams, so its modest result was disappointing rather than truly surprising.
The team has been lagging behind since it had to cancel its appearance at the Barcelona shakedown, before which rumors circulated that the car had failed the crash test and was 20 kg or more overweight.
Slimming down
This largely explains the FW48’s performance deficit compared to the leaders although, as with other Mercedes engine customers, there is a knowledge gap compared to the factory team regarding how to maximize the engine’s potential.
Before the start of the season, team principal James Vowles had described fifth place in the constructors’ championship as the new benchmark; but as things stand, the team will struggle to achieve the necessary top 10 results to maintain it.
“It’s not complicated to reduce weight,” Vowles said Sunday evening. “Already, what I have in my inbox today are all the engineering steps not only to reduce weight, but actually to be well below the required weight. That exists for us. If we were in a world without a cost cap, I would execute it tomorrow. It would be done in a few weeks. But that’s not the case.”
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The budget cap pitfall
All components are rigorously dated in terms of service life on the car before being replaced. The service life of each component is calculated based on the operational stress it undergoes because, unlike metals, carbon fiber shows few visible signs of fatigue before failing. There are various forms of non-destructive testing, such as X-rays and ultrasound, but even these do not guarantee detection of an imminent failure.
Vowles’ logic is that it is more efficient, within the budget cap, to introduce weight reduction measures via planned mid-season updates, and through the scheduled replacement of components that have reached the end of their life, rather than doing everything immediately. This fits with the idea that weight saving is a process of marginal gains consisting of reducing weight across the entire car, rather than one particular component being significantly too heavy.
Domino effect
There is also a cost implication related to transporting new parts, as logistics costs now fall within the budget cap: “It’s complex,” Vowles admits, “but it’s a good complexity if you know what I mean. The budget cap remains, in the end, very positive.”
Being overweight carries a greater penalty than before with the new engine regulations, as its effects on corner entry speed impact energy recovery, which in turn affects deployment elsewhere.
Since the energy store is constantly being discharged or recharged, this weakness tends to compound over the lap. A negative spiral to be reversed as soon as possible to avoid a blank season…