Williams has abandoned plans to run its new car for the 2019 F1 season in a filming day this weekend.
The team confirmed in a statement to RaceFans it had decided not to conduct the planned first run of the FW42 in a filming day on Saturday due to the late completion of the car.“As anyone would expect, we have had an extremely aggressive engineering programme over the winter,” said deputy team principal Claire Williams.
“As such, we have taken the decision not to run our car during our filming day this weekend in order to allow the team to maximise the time at the factory before we head to Barcelona for the first day of the test on February 18th.”
Williams presented its new title sponsor and livery in an event at its factory on Monday. The livery was revealed on the team’s 2018 car fitted with a 2019-specification front wing.
The new FW42, which uses a Mercedes power unit, was fired up for the first time on Monday.
[smr2018test]
Video: Williams presents new livery and title sponsor for 2019
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hahostolze (@hahostolze)
13th February 2019, 9:08
According to a Polish sports website, they are also in serious jeopardy regarding the first day(s) of the actual tests
Lee1
13th February 2019, 9:16
To be fair they have likely had to start pretty much from scratch as the last car had so many flaws.
kpcart
14th February 2019, 13:13
I’m polish, those sites tend to not know anything lol
bosyber (@bosyber)
13th February 2019, 9:37
In Williams case, I don’t think reliability should be their first concern, but rather a car with good, and somewhat predictable, performance. Equally, they need testing days, but not as much as they need good fundamentals for the car, so they don’t again find out on the first day they are done for the year.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
13th February 2019, 9:44
Renault partly blamed their tight schedule on delays completing the front wing rules last year. Maybe Williams fell in the same trap? It’d be interesting if other teams had the same problem. In any case, missing the shakedown shouldn’t be a big problem
theRealMax (@millionus)
13th February 2019, 10:04
I thought they all started designing their cars back mid-2018 or earlier.
Seems like Williams and Renault need new project managers..!
Todfod (@todfod)
13th February 2019, 14:02
Aah… that explains why the livery team was assigned a total of one hour on the aesthetics of their car.