New car safety requirements and the switch to 18-inch tires has raised the weight of F1 cars this 2022 season. Now the minimum weight limit is 798kg, and most teams are struggling to reach that number.
As Motorsport.com reported earlier in the year, several teams have been forced to go to extremes in a bid to cut weight because they fear they are losing too much lap time.
Aston Martin revealed that it had removed the green painted areas of its car to save around 350 grams, and McLaren also removed the orange paint from its airbox for the first race of the season.
Now Williams has joined the ranks of teams running large raw carbon fiber parts, after removing some painted areas around the sidepods and airbox that were previously dark blue or gloss black.
The Grove team’s head of vehicle performance, Dave Robson , said it was quite a task for everyone to approach the weight limit this year.
“You always wish the car was lighter and I don’t know if it shows, but the paint scheme is different,” he said of the changes made to the Australian GP.
“That’s partly about reducing the weight of the paint on the car. I don’t know how overweight we are compared to the other teams, it’s very hard to tell, but it’s completely a challenge to get these cars underweight. minimum. It’s something we can continue to work on.”
(And speaking of paint and the Williams… see how it looked with paraffin in the tests before reading on)
Photo by: Mark Sutton/Motorsport Images
Photo by: Carl Bingham/Motorsport Images
Photo by: Mark Sutton/Motorsport Images
Williams scored its first point of the season at the Australian Grand Prix, when Alex Albon rode a brilliant long run on hardballs to finish 10th after a tire change on the final lap.
Robson says Williams’ main problem at the moment is finding a good balance with the car.
“There are a couple of limitations,” he admitted. “There has been a constant issue with balance, which the drivers have talked about and we have been working on it since we arrived in Bahrain for pre-season testing.
“We’ve made some progress, and there are some new components in development that should help us with that. So there’s a bit of figuring out.”
“In terms of the ride height, setup and position, I think we’re already getting pretty close to being able to take it in the right kind of window. If we get a little wrong we risk damaging the ground, so probably that be our limit. But we’re pretty close to where we want to take it.”
“And I think for the rest, aside from that little balance issue that we’re trying to figure out, we just need a little more downforce to help get the tires in the right window and be quicker everywhere.”
