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Lowe explains "limitations" with 2018 Williams F1 car
Williams has admitted that its new Formula 1 car is struggling with corner entry and stability, something it needs to get on top of if it is to move up the grid.
Jonathan Noble
Edited: Mar 14, 2018, 12:38 PM
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The Mercedes-powered FW41 is the first car designed from the start by technical chief Paddy Lowe, and marks a big change of concept from its previous challengers.
But with the team having faced some difficulties delivering good lap times in pre-season testing in Barcelona, Lowe has admitted that there are issues that need resolving.
"The limitation in the car at the moment is corner entry and stability," he explained.
"I mean, that is quite often the limitation in a car to be honest, but it's particularly exaggerated at the moment with what we're running.
"I think if we can unlock some progress there, we will find a lot more lap time than we've got at the moment.
"Because some other aspects of the car are working really really strongly through other phases of the corner."
Lowe said that there was no single factor that was causing the problem, and that it was not totally unexpected for such issues to appear when a team takes a new development path.
"Mostly these things involve a strong aerodynamic element, but the solutions involve everything from suspension to tyres and everything else," he said. "It's always multi-dimensional.
"[There was] a large degree of change both in the team that delivered the car and the car itself. That can take a while to develop and optimise, and I think we can make a lot more progress within the season and even into next. It is still early in the potential I think that is in the team."
Despite admitting that there was a good amount of work to do, Lowe said he maintained faith in Williams' factory facilities – and said that there was no issue with wind tunnel and track correlation.
"I think the correlation is pretty [good]," he said. "Actually Williams' ability to measure aerodynamic performance is one of the strongest I've seen. The technology and people that put that together is very strong.
"We've got a great wind tunnel. I think it is well up there with the best, so we've got good tools and we can make good use of them to do even more."
He added: "I think there are things we've done which we think are working well. There are other things we've done which we think are not working so well and that we can give some more focus to.
"I think it is always like that. Did we say we've done a perfect job or something? No, this is never the case."
Additional reporting by Oleg Karpov
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