The first season under the new regulations didn’t smile to Williams. After having their best season as of late in 2021, with a podium finish and ending the constructors’ championship in eight place, 2022 brought yet another last place in the standings, scoring only eight points.
However, the situation may improve for the upcoming season. According to Williams’ Head of Vehicle Performance Dave Robson, the FW45 will be rather different to its predecessor, as the data from the simulator seems to prove that it “work quite well“ on “some of the issues“ shown before.
Pit Debrief was present when Robson first talked about the new challenger, who also admitted that it’s not clear how much of an improvement it is compared to the FW44:
“It’s difficult to know how much we’ve been able to claw back.
“It really depends how that stands up compared to everyone else. The floor regulation changes did set us back, as they set everyone back. I think we are quite pleased with how we reacted to that, but overall, the car is a step forward.“
Williams will start 2023 with a new Team Principal, James Vowles, and a new driver, rookie Logan Sargeant, who will pair up with Alexander Albon.
“We’ve seen in the simulator that we’ve started to work quite well on some of the issues that were fairly standout to the drivers last year. So we’re hopeful that will A, materialise on track and B, turn into lap time. So that’s all very promising.”
On the other hand, it’s quite hard to assess the true potential of a car by how it performs virtually on the simulator, The real benchmark will be the first testing session, which will be held in Bahrain this week.
“There’s been a big effort by everyone, a huge amount of effort throughout the company. Everything has gone pretty well in the wind tunnel and now in the factory the team are just finishing off getting the car ready. We’ll find out in a few weeks’ time how much it’s all paid off.”
From a more practical point of view, Robson declared that the testing and the actual making of the car is “going well”.
Many reworked parts have been tested already: “Quite large chunks of the car’s systems have been tested independently and now the whole car is currently coming together, getting ready to run it very soon.
He revealed that it will have a much different exterior compared to last year’s challenge, not released during the livery presentation.
“So the car build is going well. In terms of differences compared to the FW44, the whole car is an evolution in terms of its physical appearance. There’s obviously a few changes from the regs, otherwise you’ll see it soon.
“Probably the most obvious change compared to last year is around the sidepod shape, which is something we started the process of part-way through last year with the Silverstone package,” he concluded, highlighting the most striking difference.
