Williams says its new FW43 retains the “core architecture” of its troubled 2019 car, which scored just one point, having concentrated on their aerodynamic programme during the off-season.

“We have paid significant attention to understanding the problem areas of the FW42 and we have carefully chosen parts of the car to develop, those that would give us the most performance for the resources we have,” said design director Doug McKiernan after the first images of the car were presented today.

“The main concept behind the FW43 is that it is a continuous development of the FW42, with no fundamental concept changes to the layout.” he explained.

The team is eager to see improvements in the correlation between its models of the car and how it performs on-track.

“The most important indicator that we are on the right path will be the level of correlation we have between the tool kit we use to design the car and what the track data is telling us,” said McKiernan. “There has been a healthy development rate in the wind tunnel, and we have found reasonable improvements in the cooling efficiency.”

Other specific problems with the FW42 have been tackled in the new design, said McKiernan.

“The team has addressed the mechanical issues that affected it in 2019, these include the brakes and the overall weight of the car. We have made some good progress across these areas and will continue to focus on them during the season.”

Following its troubled start to 2019, when the FW42 wasn’t ready for the start of pre-season testing, chief technical officer Paddy Lowe departed the team and changes were made in the engineering department.

“The initiatives that we put in place to drive performance across all disciplines within the engineering department are evident in the design and development of the FW43,” said chief engineer Adam Carter. “It’s been great to see the hard work starting to pay off.

“The decision to retain some of the core architecture of the FW42 means there has been less resource invested in developing new concepts, which in turn has rewarded the design team with greater bandwidth to optimise their work, evident in both packaging and component detail.

“By preserving some key parameters, it has allowed for an uninterrupted development programme within [the] aerodynamics [department] in order to maximise the efficiency of the resources. As we head towards the pre-season tests and then onto the race season, the most important measure will be the progress relative to our peers, along with our intention of continuing our recent record of reliability.”

The new car will run for the first time today at the Circuit de Catalunya, according to Williams.

“Later this week we will be looking at our single timed lap pace, our long run pace and the feedback from the drivers to understand where we are and what we do next,” said Carter.

“We have teams, both at the track and back at Grove, that will be delving into all aspects that define that lap time during the pre-season tests to ensure we are in the best possible place ahead of the first race in Australia.”

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2020 F1 season