Williams reveals FW38 2016 Formula 1 car designed to fix slow-circuit issues

Williams has revealed the FW38 car it will use in the 2016 Formula 1 season ahead of the start of winter testing.

The car retains the same white livery with red and blue stripes that the team has run for the past two seasons and appears to be an evolution of the design Williams used last year.

The FW38 features the same short nose as the FW37, but the bodywork around the sidepods outlets has been make rounder and the rear of the car appears to be different to the old design.

Pat Symonds, Williams’ chief technical officer explained that the new car had been designed to be stronger where the FW37 was weak – notably on slow-speed circuits and in the wet.

He said: “The FW37 was a pretty effective car and so we concentrated on understanding the areas where we could improve it without losing the attributes which made it effective.

“It is no secret that the low speed performance of the FW37 didn’t match its high speed performance so a lot of time was spent looking into why this was and subsequently making changes, which we hope will improve the situation.

“On top of this we looked at the normal physical obstacles to development that one always meets during the life of a car and tried to push those barriers back.”

Symonds described how Williams’ senior designers had begun the planning process for the FW38 back in January 2015 and then worked on how the 2016 car would be built based on the early performances of the FW37.

He said: “In mid-January 2015, before the FW37 had even run, we held a meeting to try and work our way through a concept ‘shopping list’ and to narrow down the areas in which we hoped the FW38 would out perform its pre-nascent forerunner.

“As we started running the FW37 we could see more clearly the design directions we wanted to take with the next car and at the same time started laying out the basic architecture such that critical path items would hit their design release targets.

“The monocoque and gearbox, for example, fall into this category as both need considerable time, not just in design but also in structural analysis.”

Sir Frank Williams, founder and team principal of the Grove-based squad, explained that although his outfit went into 2016 with experience and consistency, it would be challenging to finish third in the constructors’ championship for a third year in succession.

He said: “Williams has started to cement our position back amongst the front running teams after finishing third in the Championship in the past two seasons.

“This has been a great achievement given the resources of those around us. Staying where we are will be a challenge in itself, but we are determined to keep improving because only winning will ever be good enough.

“We have a very stable team going into 2016, with Felipe [Massa] and Valtteri [Bottas] teaming up for a third successive season. They work well together and both have the ideal blend of speed and consistency.

“Our technical team has also remained very consistent which will be to our advantage and we have some of the best engineering minds on the grid at our disposal.

“We have a busy couple of weeks of testing coming up to learn more about our package and to refine the car ahead of the first race.

“We will have to wait until Melbourne to find out exactly where we stand in the pecking order but I’m confident that our hard work over the winter will stand us in good stead.”