The earlier a team reveals its ‘new car’, the less likely it is that we’re looking at the real thing. Had Williams whipped the dust sheet off its 2023 challenger a week ahead of McLaren, the engineers would have seen it purely as seven days of research and development time lost to a competitor. And in Formula 1, there can be no excess fat. Hence it wasn’t until last Monday, a week after the muted ‘livery launch’ at Grove, that the genuine FW45 finally broke cover at Silverstone for its shakedown.
Despite the team’s troubled start to the ground-effects era, it’s a case of evolution rather than revolution when it comes to underbody aero philosophy. But the top surfaces look pleasingly different as the FW45’s sidepods feature an extended undercut below…
You're reading a preview of
Autosport (Digital) - 1 Issue, 16/02/23