Unlike many of its rivals, the Williams FW40 is very much a natural evolution of its predecessor despite the exten- sive rule changes for 2017. Whereas other teams have explored new concepts in a bid to increase downforce levels, Williams have been happy to stick to what they know and expand upon their existing designs.
It is easy to forget that the Grove-based squad operate on a fraction of the budget that the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull do, so venturing down new design avenues is not in their best interests.
To some extent their conservative approach has worked as although they find themselves lagging significantly behind the big three teams they are still ahead of their biggest competitor in Force India at the moment.
Their front-wing concept is one area in particular that has seen little change over the winter period aside from the extra width and delta-shape as per the regulations, but this has been true for many teams up and down the grid (including Mercedes). However, the aerodynamics department are quickly discovering more and more about the airflow structures associated with the new tyres and constant tweaks are therefore being made to the front-wing and the floor area near the rear-tyre to control this flow, even during the early stages of the season.
In Melbourne Williams intro- duced two canards (highlighted in yellow) on the front-wing endplate, which were reorientated slightly for China. These are installed to guide air along the inside face of the endplate and to control the path of the flow leaving the cascade winglet, displacing their trajectory towards the front tyre.
The idea is the same for the small turning vane (highlighted in red) introduced in Shanghai midway up the wing – the pressure gradient induced between the two sides generates a tiny vortex that steers the surrounding airflow to a more desirable location downstream. Micromanaging the airflow in this manner is extremely delicate work and requires an immense amount of computational resources and extensive wind tunnel testing to link the aero-structures together.
So although these updates look outwardly insignificant, their wider effects on the rest of the car help unlock a great deal of laptime.
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