Williams was confronted with an aerodynamic stalling issue on its FW41 linked to its revised rear wing, the problem causing the rapid demise in qualifying yesterday of both Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin.
The Grove-based outfit has been stuck in a deep performance slump since the start of the year, its issues centered around the aerodynamics of its 2018 car.
A new rear wing was brought to Silverstone for this weekend’s British Grand Prix, but a change made to the element on Friday appeared to lead to an “intermittent stalling problem” when the DRS closes.
“We brought in some new pieces yesterday and we need to do more work but the presumption is that we have an intermittent problem with the floor stall related only to DRS, so it only happens when you use the DRS and it doesn’t recover well enough for the subsequent corner,” explained Williams tech boss Paddy Lowe.
“We can only assume now that it’s related to the new pieces even though we did a proper introduction and seem to have a stable platform as we showed in P2 yesterday.”
-
Hartley ‘had no warning’ of suspension failure
According to Lowe, the design of the wing itself has not been called into question. How the airflow around it interacts in combination with the FW41’s floor appears to be the issue.
“I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with the wing itself it’s just something in terms of the car with everything in combination,” said Lowe.
“The phenomenon of today is something we’ve never seen before on this car or indeed any other car.”
Upon further analysis of the problem, Williams has subsequently decided to revert back to a previous wing specification for Sunday’s race, a change that automatically spells a race start from the pitlane for both Sirotkin and Stroll who had qualified P18 and P19 respectively.
©WRI