Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe has revealed an aerodynamic stalling problem due to a new rear wing brought to the British Grand Prix was the cause of their problems in qualifying.
As the British team continues to try and work their way through their problems which have caused the team to slump down the field in 2018, it appears the new rear wing is causing an what Lowe described as an 'intermittent stalling problem' when the DRS flap closes into its normal position.
He said: "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.
"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."
Lowe has made it clear the team are trying to resolve the issues ahead of the race and refused to rule out a pit-lane start for both drivers should they find a solution which would cause both FW41s to come out of Parc Ferme.
"Well, we’re just deciding now what we do for this event. Lowe added. "In terms of in general, we will need to go back and regroup. We have work to do."
Lance Stroll weighed in on the subject describing it as something he has never felt before, albeit he feels the car is better under normal driving conditions, despite the lack of pace still within the car.
"I’ve never experienced that before, that’s the first time I’ve experienced that," added the 19-year old. "We have a new rear wing this weekend and we have some new set-ups on the car.
"So I think due to those new set-ups and the rear wing and all that – I don’t want to make a conclusion myself, it’s not my position to say exactly what technically went wrong – from what I understood that’s what caused a bunch of these surprise stalls.
"For a driver for sure, it’s never comforting to experience it, but I know that when the car is in a normal condition you’re not going to have fear of that happening on a regular basis."
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