Williams boss James Vowles has addressed how the team targeted building a versatile Formula 1 car to be “strong everywhere” rather than only on specific tracks for 2024.
Having resided at the bottom of the standings upon F1’s return to ground effect cars in 2022, Williams managed to sustain its strongest season since 2017 last term.
The Grove-based squad accumulated a total of 28 points to clinch seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship, despite bringing only a solitary upgrade package.
Williams capitalised on the strength of its FW45 challenger around low-downforce circuits as Alex Albon peaked with seventh-place finishes in both Canada and Monza.
But Vowles has outlined that his brief for the development direction for 2024 comprised ensuring it assembled a package that is competitive across an array of track types.
“So first and foremost, I want a car that is performant at all tracks, not just some tracks,” Vowles said at the launch of Williams’ 2024 livery on Tuesday.
“Yes, we were paying the mech to get past last year, but that doesn’t make a strength of a car, that’s just using a weakness to overcome a strength.
“We were great in Monza and a few other tracks, but I want us to be strong everywhere.
“So the first change was really focusing on an aerodynamic package and a platform, so vehicle dynamics, vehicle performance and aerodynamics.”
Despite the progress Williams made last season, Albon admitted that the team’s potential had remained capped by limitations that had been embedded in its machinery through the span of several rules cycles.
“We had a difficult car behaviour last year, a very difficult car behaviour last year, and it wasn’t most teams in the grid suffering, it was very much our suffering at the track,” he continued.
“And Zandvoort really showed you what this car can do if a lot of that spiteful behaviour, a lot of that difficult behaviour disappears and it did in Zandvoort.
“So the base package isn’t bad, it’s not that we have poor amounts of downforce, it’s just marred by a number of other things.”
Vowles, who arrived at the helm on the eve of the previous season, insists that the British outfit’s rebuild is dependent on the entire team pulling in the same direction.
“The way I did that is it’s never the work of one individual,” he explained.
“My job was to bring together the right people in the room and ensure that we all know, my shoulders are there too, that the weight of the performance of the car rests on our shoulders, not any one person, it’s not aerodynamics, it’s not how the suspension is designed, it’s not how we operate at the track, it’s all of us.
“That created some really, really interesting conversations about direction of travel.”
