Williams should be in a better position for the 2024 Formula 1 season.
Team principal James Vowles has had a year to implement aspects of the structure and processes that made his previous employer Mercedes so successful. With the addition of Pat Fry as chief technical officer, Williams should go from a little lost to a positive direction.
Now, all he has to do is make sure he doesn’t get too ambitious down the road.
He needs to make sure he sticks with Alex Albon for the long term, because other teams will soon start making noises about poaching him. In the short term, the number two driver needs to collect points. Logan Sargeant has the speed, but last year he made too many mistakes.
Williams was one of the teams that very early in 2023 followed Red Bull’s visual concept. The car was always quick on the straights, which unfortunately usually indicates a lack of downforce. But drivers have generally complained about a lack of front-end traction and brake lockup in slow corners.
Williams is the latest team to reveal its 2024 car, doing so at a shakedown in Bahrain a day before testing begins.
As with most of the cars we’ve seen so far this year, Williams has drawn inspiration from the standard Red Bull 2023. Everything looks neat and tidy, but is it enough to move the team into the top 10 consistently?
NOSE/FRONT WING
The nose and front wing assembly has been subtly changed from what Williams ran last year. The car now has a socket gap under the nose area between the front element and the second element (highlighted in red below). This will help attach flow to the underside of the nose.
The nose has a squarer and flatter top surface, meaning less flow will go around the sides of the nose. With this design, more will go over the top surface (yellow arrows in the image below). As we can see, the part of the wing near the nose (orange ellipse) will receive less high energy airflow, so that means it is effectively less powerful.
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-2.jpg)
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-2.jpg)
The trailing edge profile of the fourth element (green highlights above) has been changed to alter the load distribution across the front wing span. The load is now more even and increases as it goes out. The larger chord section is just inside the inside corner of the front tire, but I would be a little concerned about the effect the tire will have on the front aeroplane when rudder lock is applied.
The outboard edge where the fins meet the endplate (magenta ellipse above) is all about maximizing the outwash in that area. Connecting the airflow exiting the top and bottom surfaces using these external slot gaps with the airflow that is displaced outwards when the tire rotates on the track surface means less airflow is displaced inward, reducing turbulence of the interior. This, in turn, will improve the performance of the front end of the floor.
Front Suspension
The front suspension setup is again similar to last year, with an inboard torsion spring and pushrod operated damper (highlighted in red below).
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-3.png)
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-3.png)
The upper assembly (dark green front leg, light green rear leg top and bottom) has the usual but probably increased anti-dive, shown by the difference in height where the inboard ends meet the frame.
There seems to be more height difference on the outboard end, which makes me think that what we normally call an upper wishbone is actually a manifold. In other words, two separate items.
With this, you can position the outer pick-ups to give you reduced camber change with increased steering lock. In slow cornering, the lateral ‘g’ is much less than in fast cornering, so reducing camber with high steering angles increases the front tire’s contact patch, which will increase front-end traction.
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-4.jpg)
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-4.jpg)
Again, looking from behind we can see this height difference (yellow ellipse below) at the outboard ends.
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-5.jpg)
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-5.jpg)
PLAIVO ENTRANCE
Williams were the first to follow Red Bull’s entry style in 2023, so it’s no surprise that they’ve continued on that path.
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-6.jpg)
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-6.jpg)
The intakes aren’t quite as letterbox-shaped as Red Bull completed last season, but that may just have to do with the heat dissipation of the Mercedes power unit compared to the Honda and/or Williams cooling technology versus Red Bull .
Maximizing efficiency in both of these areas can pay big dividends, since the airflow used for cooling isn’t very useful for creating downforce.
INTRODUCING AIRBOX
The airbox intake area is interesting. Most teams adopted the triangular intake, but Williams is more square.
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-ADDITIONAL.jpg)
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-ADDITIONAL.jpg)
It looks like the inlet split is horizontal (green arrow), with the bottom flow (red arrow) going to the turbo and the top (yellow arrow) feeding some of the cooling requirements.
Structurally for the roll bar requirements this is a little more difficult, but it also allows the bottom surface to be a little higher, which reduces turbulence and allows for taller drivers.
FLOOR EDGE
Moving on to the side of the car, we can see that the floor edge treatment (red ellipse below) is much more aggressive than before.
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-7.jpg)
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-7.jpg)
Williams has really focused on getting airflow away from the front corner of the floor.
This allows the diffuser to work primarily on the airflow entering under the nose area in the central part of the floor.
Airflow at the outer edge of the floor is critical to floor and diffuser performance.
The yellow arrows in the image below represent the flow coming over the top surface. I have also marked a slot gap that is between the main surface of the floor and the outer surface of the edge. These two are separated to allow flow through this area to create the sealing vortices.
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-8.jpg)
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-8.jpg)
The upper surface flow (yellow arrows above) will pass through this front part of the slot gap (red highlight). This pulls the flow from under the front corner of the floor (green arrows).
An airflow rotation (magenta arrows) will then be set up that will go back through the slot gap (orange highlight) and, if all goes according to plan, connect to the airflow displaced by the rotating rear tire on the track surface. The goal is to get it out of the tire, keeping it away from the diffuser.
The blue ellipse above highlights what I would call the hangers that support this longitudinal section of the outer edge. It’s easy for them to “pop” the eddies you’ve so carefully created, so attention to detail here is critical.
BACK END
The rear suspension is largely dictated by Mercedes as Williams use their gearbox. The inboard pickup points will be determined by Mercedes, so even if Williams builds its own suspension, the basic geometry will be very similar.
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-9.jpg)
![](https://www.the-race.com/content/images/2024/02/Gary-Williams-9.jpg)
In this rear angle shot, he used the beam wing (red highlight above) to improve the performance of the diffuser (yellow highlight). This will be an element that will change depending on the downforce requirements of the circuit, but when you need high levels of downforce then the airflow at the rear of the car to work as one is far more powerful than all of them working independently .
Even the feature on the outer surface of the fender endplate (green arrows) is there to affect the airflow on that surface, which in turn will affect the airflow across the entire rear of the car.
CONCLUSION
Everything becomes a little more like a one-build formula. Paint them all the same colors and it might take a few guesses before you can tell who’s who.
That said, it’s the smaller details that will make all the difference in performance. Along with the part we don’t see – the subfloor – we head into pre-season testing with no idea who will have used the winter to make progress.
They won’t all be faster, but it would be nice if the overall package closed down a bit, giving us some hope for a bit of variety in results.
With the right test in Bahrain on Wednesday, 2024 starts now!
ALL OTHER 2024 F1 CAR DESIGNS BY GARY ANDERSON