The Williams-Renault FW34 will be ready for Jerez

Williams experienced a difficult season in 2011, and the Grove team hopes to do much better in 2012. In 2011, there was a restructuring with the departure of Sam Michael and the arrival of Mike Coughlan. The new technical director has been working for some time now on the Williams-Renault FW34, and a first chassis has been completed.

From now on, the single-seaters must pass the FIA crash tests to participate in pre-season testing, and the FW34 should soon pass them. Coughlan therefore believes that the car will be ready to head to Jerez at the beginning of February.

The first chassis has been completed and a second one is almost ready, and we will soon begin our FIA crash-test program, all of which have already been successfully passed in private tests. We therefore have a complete single-seater that will be used for system checks, it has better aerodynamics and it will contain all the systems that will allow us to conduct the initial tests. Our goal is to have an updated single-seater for the last pre-season tests, Mike Coughlan said in the iGNITION magazine published by Williams.

The new Williams-Renault should be ready by mid-January, in time to head to Jerez on February 7 for the first pre-season tests. During these tests, the team will evaluate the endurance of the different components.

The car is scheduled to be delivered in mid-January, and we will be ready for the first testing session at the beginning of February. The goal is that by the end of January, all the parts that can be checked have been, and the track tests are a verification of that.

There should be enough mileage in the main parts so that if the car stops on the track with a major problem, it will be a surprise. In addition to testing, we will focus on improving the reliability and overall aerodynamic performance of the single-seater.

Aerodynamics had been one of the problems for the FW33 driven by Rubens Barrichello and Pastor Maldonado this season. The team’s goal will be to do better and they hope to achieve this as past mistakes have been analyzed to avoid being repeated.

There has been a thorough analysis of what went wrong and where we need to improve, and we have concluded that some strategic mistakes were made in the past.

We have identified key elements that we need to implement, not just for next year but for the future, in order to design a good single-seater each year. We need performance and reliability, and with these two factors, you can win races and championships, and we feel we are heading in the right direction.

Coughlan acknowledges that aerodynamics was not the only issue with the FW33; some choices did not pay off. Additionally, the team failed to properly exploit the blown diffuser concept, which will be banned for 2012.

I don’t think it’s just the aerodynamics; I believe we made decisions that were gambles, which actually cost us in performance from a vehicle dynamics standpoint, but this should have been offset by the aerodynamic gain.

« Obviously, it didn’t pay off – if it had, we would have had a much better season. You also have to consider the importance of the blown diffuser. We spent a lot of time developing it in the wind tunnel to see what it could have brought, but ultimately we weren’t able to blow the diffuser, so we can say that we would have been better off spending that time designing a non-blown diffuser. »

The Williams team scored only 5 points in 2011, with only three finishes in the points, two 9th places for Barrichello and one 10th place for Maldonado. The team is therefore doing everything to be present in the top ten next year.

The switch from Cosworth to Renault starting in 2012 could be a game-changer and help the team gain some performance from an engine standpoint. The two entities have already begun working together to prepare for 2012.

«We also have a new partner in Renault, and we have just completed a week of testing at the Renault Sport F1 facilities in Viry, where our new gearbox covered three weekends at Spa.»

The advantages of Renault engines are power, their ability to be used with high water and oil temperatures, and a very low degradation in terms of power over the engine’s lifecycle, the Briton added.