The Williams FW44 is certainly the surprise of F1 testing in Barcelona. Grove’s team, eighth in the 2021 Constructors’ World Championship, has taken on the entry into the new era of ground-effect single-seaters, and has laid the foundations to return little by little to the blazon of its history, after years of serious difficulties. that had brought her to the bottom of the grid with serious financial problems.
With the purchase of the team by the Dorilton Group from the Williams family in 2020 and the arrival of Jost Capito as CEO, things have changed. The German called Francois-Xavier Demaison, the Frenchman who was with him in the winning adventure of the Vw in the WRC, to the technical management, and the gradual recovery has begun.
Alex Albon, Williams FW44
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
The FW44 is a ground effect machine born with few resources, but which can be developed with care thanks to the compensation that the English court has imposed on the sponsor ROKit and the arrival of Duracell. The car immediately showed its strong personality by presenting, with Mercedes, the F1 with smaller, almost non-existent bellies.
The extreme design of the sides was made possible thanks to the study of a frame that has an unconventional monocoque: the Williams, in fact, in the tank area has decided to go to the maximum width allowed at the base, to tighten upwards with a triangular section that brought to mind the achievements of Gordo Murray with the Brabham BT42 and BT44.
Brabham BT42: Murray’s 1973 single-seater with a triangular chassis
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
This choice allowed the Grove team to aim for a very slim car in the sides. And if we add to all this that two radiant packs have been removed from the bellies and placed above the Mercedes engine to form an open V, you can understand why above the Venturi channels there are minimum sides that compete with the W13.
Williams FW44: the triangular frame in the tank area and the V-shaped radiators above the Mercedes engine
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
The bellies are very sloping and the pavement surface at the bottom is really extra large. Demaison’s engineers went beyond the Mercedes aero choices, granting themselves an additional option: observing the radiator inlet already during the shakedown at Silverstone we noticed that the FW44 had the particularity of having the anti-intrusion cone inside the socket. of air separating the stream in two.
Williams FW44: the bellies are modular and offer different usage options
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
On a fast track and with a cool temperature like in Barcelona, Williams allowed herself the luxury of opening the air passage above the cone, inside the belly (red arrow in the circle on the right), to feed the Coanda effect and direct the flow to that huge sidewalk.
It is evident that on hot tracks such as Bahrain, the option will not be used to make the most of the cooling function: in this case the cone is covered by a carbon bulkhead (round bottom left).
Williams FW44, detail of the air passage in the belly
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
This solution and the protrusion of the lower anti-intrusion cone from the side design are proof of how much the FW44 is the result of an accurate aerodynamic study already in the design phase and suggests that at Grove they also have clear ideas on development, allowing themselves concepts of a top team modular car while being aware of being a team that can aspire to grow towards the infamous midfield.
Williams FW44: the anti-intrusion cone protrudes from the belly design
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
Alexander Albon and Nicholas Latifi went to the center of the group in the times table, confirming also with good performances the fact that Williams seems to have been born with healthy and very interesting concepts.
A proof of what we are saying is given that already on the first day of pre-season tests, the FW44 was equipped with the showy round hole in the trailing edge of the bottom to try to combat the phenomenon of hopping.
Nicholas Latifi, Williams FW44, performs aerodynamics tests with flo viz paint
Photo by: Alessio Morgese
Porpoising, evidently, had already been analyzed at Silverstone, so Williams came to Montmelò with a solution adopted quickly, while even the best competitors had to try some changes practiced on the field.
At Grove they did a good job hoping to exploit the Mercedes engine, always considered the most powerful of the lot…
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