Williams had serious problems with its performance on the softer tyre compounds in second practice according to Sergey Sirotkin.
The team’s drivers ended second practice session at the bottom of the times sheets. Sirotkin said the team’s performance on the softer rubber was even worse than they expected.
“FP2 was a very, very, very bad session to be honest,” he said. “I didn’t get anything out from the tyres.“We know how important it is this year. Putting it right, I think it’s quite a big thing to improve. It’s not always been so easy for us to understand how to extract more from the tyre at the moment.
“It was much better in FP1 with the prime tyre, but on the softer compounds, it didn’t work.”
Sirotkin is driving at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for the first time this year. He said the team tried experimenting with its set-ups in the hope of getting the tyres to work consistently.
“Sometimes it works OK, sometimes it’s not. Also some things we did more like, probably we knew before the runs it’s not going to be ideal, but had to go for it in terms of the learning we wanted to collect.
“Before the session we knew it was going to be compromised, but for sure it was a bit more painful than we thought. There’s a lot of time in tyre performance, and for sure we missed it completely this session.”
“It’s probably not as disappointing as it looks on the standings itself,” he added.
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@HoHum (@hohum)
8th June 2018, 22:35
Again, what is this F one or F tyre. The world championship of tyre management !?
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
9th June 2018, 13:09
Williams seems to be a bit lost, like they are trying to do thing without understanding what they are doing and maybe luck will provide them a better setup. It is how I read this anyway…
Not sure if that comes from lack of feedback (or unclear) from the drivers or engineers not quite understanding what they need to do to improve the situation.
A bit sad to see Williams in that situation either way.
NS Biker (@rekibsn)
8th June 2018, 22:56
In terms of Tyre Management, Red Bull (both teams), seemed to have it in hand in Monaco and in Montreal.
Given that this is a “power” circuit, how is it they are able to overcome some of the Renault deficit, be it perceived or real.?
Is this the A. Newey effect.?
ZUKMAN
9th June 2018, 6:15
Maybe Reanult power deficit helps with tyre management, especially on the rear, who knows.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
9th June 2018, 7:01
@rekibsn – I’m not an expert, but I believe a couple of factors are:
1) suspension geometry that “places” they tyre better on the road, even as the car moves around
2) better downforce – remember that a lot of regular tyre wear/graining occurs due to the car sliding laterally during cornering, so downforce reduces this sliding around (wear due to engine power / braking mostly occurs due to driver error, such as spinning up the wheels, or locking wheels under braking).
Nitzo (@webtel)
9th June 2018, 9:46
@rekibsn
I would say it is premature to make such a statement. We have seen two practice sessions. That’s all.
Mercedes haven’t used the Hypers. Ferrari are known to sandbag on Fridays.
We will know more as the weekend progresses.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
9th June 2018, 0:43
I know it’s unheard of these days, but is it possible to attach the Halo to the FW40 and use that for the next few rounds whilst working on this years car to sort out the stalling diffuser issue? They’re surely more likely to move forward with last years car in the short term. I’m assuming crash tests would rule that out, but for a team to go backwards in such a drastic fashion is unheard of. If Brabham could run Patrese & Piquet in two completely different chassis/engines in 1982, what stops Williams reverting to one driver doing it in the hope of overhauling Sauber? Chassis aren’t homologated in Melbourne.
socksolid (@socksolid)
9th June 2018, 1:58
Not really. The halo looks like it is a bolt-on addon but it requires lots of reinforcement from the chassis. Every team had to design new monocoques for this season for this reason and there was some complaining before the season how the halo made the chassis heavier. I think there are also some new crash tests the chassis needs to pass (which the old one would fail). And the halo requires some work on the chassis to make it work on the airflow as well.
It is possible williams could revert back to last year’s floor while using this season monococque but there could be reasons why they have not done that already. Reasons being different layout of parts, cooling issues or even airflow issues with other parts of the car. Or the issue is in the suspension or weight balance or combination of many things.
There seems to be all kinds of issues with the car. First it had cooling issues and then it was the floor stalling and unpredictable handling characteristics. Some where in march Paddy Lowe said the team has already started “a recovery program” but apparently that will only come at mid season.