With the start of the 2018 Formula One season only a few months away discussions are moving to the 2018 cars. In particular comments have come from ex Williams driver Felipe Massa in regard to the 2018 Williams car. Felipe has spoken as to the car been more aggressive and looks a lot different than the 2017 Williams. On the driver front reports still have Russian Sergey Sirotkin in the 2018 Williams.
2018
Williams to be more aggressive
With a most of
the focus been on who will be the second 2018 driver for the Williams
Martini team there has been very little discussion in regard to the 2018
Williams. That is until now with ex Williams drivers Felipe Massa publicly
taking about what he had seen of the car while with the team. Felipe spoke
of how the 2018 challenger is far "more aggressive" than the 2017 model.
After a disappointing 2017 season where Williams dropped to fifth in the
championship even Paddy Lowe spoke of the need for the team to change their
design philosophy in regard to the 2018 car. And with it been the first year
where Lowe's influence will be seen Felipe said that the changes on the car
were quite significant.
In an interview with Autosport.com Felipe said: "I saw the new car in the
windtunnel and I saw so many changes that it looks quite interesting.
"Everybody is working. Maybe you get to the first race and everybody has so
many different changes and everything in the car.
"The car looks a lot more aggressive. It looks a lot more different so I
believe maybe they can improve."
Felipe also spoke of how the 2018 season will see Williams not only in a
fight with their usual rivals Force India but with the likes of Renault and
McLaren..
"You will have Renault that will improve," he added. "You will also have
McLaren so we need to see how much it can be, this improvement.
"I need to see also what the drivers can do but I believe maybe the team can
have a better car compared to what we had until now."
Comments from Paddy Lowe were also included in regard to the building and
testing of the new 2018 car. He spoke of how busy things are as the team
gets the new car ready.
"People are very
busy with the car," said Lowe. "There's lots of work to do and some things
are a bit late unfortunately.
"So people are going to have to really work very hard in the next two
months.
"But there is some good work going on and we hope to make a big improvement
compared to the 2017 car."
On the driver
front reports still have Russian Sergey Sirotkin joining the Williams team
in 2018.
Looking at his career, none of cars comming out of a team with Paddy as the TD (or whatever Mclaren translated that) had boring designs...maybe just the 2009 design, others all have been quite exciting atleast visually.
I expect to see what we have been waiting for half a decade: a change of direction in design of gearbox and rear end.and maybe alot of Ferrari/Mercedes complexity around bargeboard and sidepod entry.
If Paddy indeed went down the transmission change route as FI have, the car should benefit from options on rear suspension design.
If the rear end is cheaper and allows the team to focus their development on other parts of the car... then job done and moving on to the next improvement in line.
I forgot to mention that happily we'll see the end to the 'finned engine covers and T bars' that looked totally out of place on an F1 car. The Halo will look bad though. Win some, lose some i guess.
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