Williams introduce new wings for Spa

Posted on

| Written by

Williams are hoping to celebrate Rubens Barrichello‘s 300th Formula 1 race this weekend at the Belgian Grand Prix with a strong performance, thanks to new front and rear wings.

Williams‘ Technical Director Sam Michael said: "We will have new front and rear wings, plus some mechanical changes for the FW32 for this race. We’re also looking forward to celebrating Rubens’ 300 Grand Prix in Belgium, an impressive achievement."

Barrichello will celebrate his milestone Grand Prix at the track which saw him earn his first pole position 16 years ago:

This race will be my 300th in Formula One. I feel very privileged to have been in the sport for such a long time and it feels great to reach this milestone. I still think I am at the top of my game and plan to continue being competitive long past my 300th GP."
Rubens Barrichello

Rookie team mate Nico Hulkenberg has also commented on his improved performance, following his season best finish in Hungary.

"After Hungary, I spent some time analysing the race weekend with my engineers and have some good data. It was nice to go into the shutdown period with a good result on the score sheets – it’s allowed me to fully relax and I’ve since had a really nice few weeks’ break.

"We’ve definitely made progress with the pace of the FW32 in recent races and I definitely feel that I’ve upped my qualifying and race performance. This gives me the confidence to feel quite positive about the remaining third of the year."

2010 Belgian Grand Prix

    Browse all 2010 Belgian Grand Prix articles

    17 comments on “Williams introduce new wings for Spa”

    1. Not his 300th start tho ;-)

    2. Wishing him & the team all the best as they have really shown that they have the pace to be regularly in the points.

    3. As they have been improving form lately they might actually get a decent result here. But we will have to see how it works out as the midfield is pretty close.

      1. The question is if the Cosworth is strong enough on the straight.

        1. I don’t see why not, the Aerodynamic package is probably more important nowadays anyway.

          1. Geordie Porker
            25th August 2010, 11:36

            Tell that to Red Bull when they are 11kph down on the straights!

            Good luck to Williams / Rubens though – they’ve been improving and it’s always good to see an ‘independant’ constructor do well.

            1. It’s called drag.

            2. Renault team was fastest trough the speed trap in Canada and Rosberg’s Mercedes was among the slowest (20th). I mention this because it is commonly understood that Renault is one of the least powerful engines but Mercedes are one of the most powerful, but the speed trap data ironically would suggest the opposite, but we know thats not the case.
              What this shows is that the engines are so powerful and competitive that all that matters is drag.

              Watch this at 5:35 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6W9HS6PEHg Here you see Hamilton in an better engine plus KERS power, so he has got there close to 100bhp advantage ,BUT he doesn’t even slightly close up on Webber until he pulls into his slipstream, in other words, when all you got is bhp its not worth anything, but when you shed drag you suddenly have a big advantage. You can also see there Hamilton loosing momentum relatively to Webber after he pulls out of his slipstream again, and quadruple-confirms what I’am saying.

              What Horner is doing, is playing political games and/or trying to take other peoples eyes and heads away from his car, for example in Monaco he had to point it out for about million times that it was the engine that won them the race, he also said that EBD is not important neither are the flexi wings. What he is in subtext saying all the time is ” No, no, our cars’ success has nothing to do with engineering and massive downforce and clever technical innovations, its all because of outside factors, stuff happens!”. See what I mean?

            3. HounslowBusGarage
              25th August 2010, 20:58

              @ Mateuss
              “Renault team was fastest trough the speed trap in Canada and Rosberg’s Mercedes was among the slowest (20th). I mention this because it is commonly understood that Renault is one of the least powerful engines but Mercedes are one of the most powerful, but the speed trap data ironically would suggest the opposite, but we know thats not the case.”
              False logic.
              Not necessarily true at all. Car A might have a more powerful engine than Car B. But if Car A has a high downforce (and therfore drag) configuration, they might be slower through the speed trap than Car B with a low downforce/drag config.

            4. But thats what I meant, all that matters is drag!

        2. What I ment is that last year with Toyota engines, Williams were far behind in both Spa and Monza (and so were Toyota, because the engine wasn’t strong enough). And in Turkey this year Williams were slow as well on the long straight.

          1. Having that said, I do hope they will be strong on these tracks as wess.

    4. Red Bull’s engine is probably only responsible for about 3mph of the top speed shortfall. The rest is caused by the cars fundamental downforce levels. It pushes itslef harder into the track than any other car which makes it harder to achieve higher top speeds. When creating downforce, the designer has an acceptable trade off against drag in mind, it’s the same with any team but it’s all relative. As the downforce increases so does the drag and innevitably the accpetable level of drag per unit of downforce also increases. As the Red Bull is producing about 15% more downforce than anything else it is also producing a whacking great chunk of extra drag which hurts it on the straights by labouring the engine which in turns means the team has to run a more conservative set of cogs in the gearbox and so on and so on. It has a knock on effect on every aspect of the car but that’s clearly the price they’re willing to pay in order to be a full gear up on the rest of the field in the twisty stuff.

      1. Surely it’s the only logical way of designing a modern F1 car anyway, especially for a team chasing the championships. Nearly all the tracks are high downforce except for a few.

        I’m sure RB will shrug off Spa/Monza/Canada knowing that they dominate everything else whilst McLaren look silly pinning their hopes on those three tracks and looking like mugs everywhere else.

        1. Plus it’s about the only thing on a car designers can easily change (improve). Everything else is frozen.

    5. I say bring back V10s, turbos, sliding skirts, active ride and moveable aero, allow each team to pick 2 of these taboo technologies, one mechanical and one aero and see what happens.

      1. Why not, sounds like fun!!.

        Could be dangerous! But sounds like fun!.

    Comments are closed.