Williams boss James Vowles has revealed how the weather and an aggressive development route are behind the team’s choice to avoid the traditional shakedown of its latest Formula 1 car at Silverstone.
Prior to pre-season testing, the teams will take the chance to run their newest machines for the first time using their two allocated filming days each year. Those events, which have been doubled in length for 2024, enable the engineers to ensure issues are addressed to reduce the chance of enduring a disrupted pre-season schedule.
But while Williams has tended to take its freshest creation to the home of the British Grand Prix, the FW46 will make its on-track debut in Bahrain right before testing starts.
Vowles has detailed how the inconsistent weather conditions in England mean that conducting such runs can be problematic, whereas the desert in Bahrain provides a more stable platform to sift through checks.
However, Vowles also admitted that the team has strived to push the deadlines with the development of its 2024 charger as it seeks to eliminate the limitations that had been embedded in its cars for several years.
When asked if Williams was deliberately pushing it a bit later this year, Vowles said: “Yes, we switched off the work on basically last year’s car, the ‘23 car, very early on. It was around about March or April was the last point at which we did any work on that car. And then what we were doing with this car is pushing everything to the limit.
“To give you ideas of that, the chassis technology is different, some of the other technologies are quite different to what we’ve done before. And those changes are enormous for an organisation, absolutely enormous.
“Some of those have challenged us to push ourselves beyond where we wanted to be. But in the case of what’s happened overall, I’m very, very happy. You simply can’t do everything at the same time.
“You can’t change what you’re doing, break technology cycles and put yourself in a much better performance situation without taking an enormous amount of risk. And we have there’s no doubt about it.
“Having the car where we have it now, and you’ll see it in Bahrain, is late.
“To answer your question on Silverstone, we could easily have run down there. But there is a balance between doing the virtual track test in Silverstone, and I’d much rather want to spend time dedicated to the virtual track test, and then basically film it, rather than shake it down, in Bahrain. Silverstone, I have several feelings towards it. I’ve done it for a number of years. And sometimes you get some really good things out of it.
“Sometimes you’re running around on X-Rack tyres in a blustery condition with your bit of equipment falling over, and you don’t learn a single thing. And that balance means I’d much rather do virtual track testing, and then bring the car to Bahrain where we can do that properly.
“And then furthermore save that [second] filming day for later in the year, where we either need footage, or we need some other professionals or artists to be added.
“So a bit of it is we’ve pushed ourselves to the absolute limit. A bit of it is we actually need far more in doing other testing, if you like to call it that, and use Bahrain as the opportunity to get started,” he concluded.
The Grove-based squad is endeavouring to build on an encouraging campaign last term that saw it rise to seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship with 28 points.
While Vowles concedes the FW46 has taken inspiration from its rivals’ designs, he stressed that he urged the team to avoid replicating other cars without understanding the inner workings of their components.
“Some of the features you’ll recognize from other successful cars, but it’s not really, to be clear, it’s not through copying,” he explained. “What I was really clear with our team over is everything should be through experiment, design, test, and then put back in again. And if that ends up moving towards something that seems to other cars, fine.
“But what we’re not going to do is copy the other cars and then try and understand it down with flow dynamics.
“The car will look different, but you’ll see it’s an evolution because it always is. It’s very hard to step away from it too much.”
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