Williams ran three different floors on Logan Sargeant’s car during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend as it tried to identify why his FW46 wasn’t producing as much downforce as his team mate’s.
Team principal James Vowles said the team had the same problem on Alexander Albon’s car earlier in the season.“It’s fair to say that both cars have been suffering with an odd situation where we can measure a small amount of downforce loss.” he said in a video released by the team after the Spanish Grand Prix. “That’s been happening across several events, more typically on Alex’s side than on Logan’s side, Logan here across three different floors.
“We had what we know to be a good state floor on Friday in FP1,” he explained. “That’s where he was due to start. That reported a loss. We had the same [when] we changed to another floor for FP2 and the same again as we changed to a brand new floor, in fact, for qualifying.
“The reason why we were changing floors is simply that the floors are geometrically in a good way so when you put a floor in the car, you’re continuously – all teams will do this – adjusting it to get into the optimum position, relative to where it should be from design. But even in that state, we were seeing an amount of reported loss and that wasn’t happening on Alex’s side.”
Vowles said the team will look more deeply into the cause of the problem which affected Sargeant, who qualified three-tenths of a second slower than his team mate last weekend.
“I’m more in a situation that when you’ve changed three different floors, I think it’s fair to say you don’t question the floor, because they were reporting exactly the same amount of loss. So I think either we’re not measuring this correctly, which is entirely possible, or that we have another element that we’re not understanding on the car in that circumstance.
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“It’s frustrating because that is also, to be fair, an element of modern day Formula 1 cars where we’re trying to get a floor within decimals of a millimetre to be positionally correct. So it’s not unusual either.
Both drivers failed to reach Q2 in Spain and finished the race out of the points. Vowles said it was a painful reversal of their recent form.
“I think it’s fair to say that we had good events in Monaco and Montreal,” he said. “The car is getting lighter, we’re adding performance to the car, and it’s translating. So it was a smack in the mouth when we went to Barcelona and the car was poor.”
Although the team has tended to under-perform at the Circuit de Catalunya, Vowles said they didn’t see the improvements they expected following the changes to their car design this year.
“To a certain extent, looking at what we’ve changed with the car, the car should have been more competitive this year than it was previously. There’s a lot of characteristics that we’ve spent time on redeveloping. Some of the aero characteristics have changed on the fundamentals of the car changed. And yet we weren’t.
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“We were as poor as we have been in previous years. We were lapped by teams that we were faster at the previous two events, in fact the last four or five events. They haven’t changed their car, so that puts it in the category of we’re getting something either fundamentally wrong in on parent car design in Barcelona, or we haven’t got the car set-up in the correct direction for it, or a number of attributes or being added together.”
Vowles said the specifics of the Catalunya circuit may have exposed a remaining weakness in the FW46. He is optimistic the coming races will be better, following which it plans to introduce a significant upgrade.
“There’s no such thing as a ‘bogey race’. There’s no such thing as ‘you’re just bad at this one track’. What there is, is that there are elements of a car that need to be in the right place to have fundamentals that work across all 24 tracks, and understanding that and pushing into the discomfort of why are we not quick in Barcelona will actually lead to more performance gains across other tracks.
“There are certain aspects of Barcelona that make it fairly unique. It’s a good mix of high-speed content, low-speed and mid-speed. More in the mid than the high-speed, definitely.
“It’s a circuit where you’re very hot on tyres. Typically, as you can see there, it was mid-summer really in Barcelona with track temperatures at the higher end, but it’s not the first time we’ve run at higher temperature. There’s a lot of energy that goes in as well as the result of the high-speed and the mid-speed corners.
“One of the other characteristics is the corner profiles are very different to others. It’s not that you’re rotating and getting the rotation done quickly, it’s actually a long time spent a continuous lateral G.
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“These may or may not be contributing factors. The point to this is simply to show that we have to go and break all of that down, and understand what has characterised or caused a performance loss in simulation. Once you have it in simulation, you’re then able to adapt the car both through set-up and fundamentals of aero design in order to improve it. And that’s the journey that we’re on.
“I don’t expect that this performance will translate now in Austria or Silverstone. I think you’ll see a return to a more normal condition.”
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2024 Spanish Grand Prix
- Russell ensures Norris has still never kept his lead from pole position
- Williams repeatedly switch floors in search for Sargeant’s missing downforce
- “Why’s he not defending?”: How Russell sank to fourth after stunning start
- What radio calls reveal about Verstappen’s controlled pace and Perez’s struggles
- 2024 Spanish Grand Prix weekend F1 driver ratings
TheDonz
26th June 2024, 11:56
It’s simple really, when you drive really slow the aero doesn’t work as well!
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
26th June 2024, 17:51
hes been given substandard kit (parts cars) for most of his drive and treated like an red headed step child. It’s not really his fault, but he (Logan) should have accepted a drive from a better managed team. And only driven with the right support, because clearly hes been thrown under the bus, and used to as an attraction for the US market.
If they are changing his floors, then they are using him as a test mule, or giving him parts that Albon won’t use.
Its really that simple. Williams blow, they are underfunded and mismanaged, and subjugated by Mercedes. As soon as Wolff pulled his stake from Williams and Suzie left, they turned in to garbage, and they never recovered. It’s really that simple.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
26th June 2024, 17:54
Judge a tree by it’s fruits, and if you see what Wolff has done to Williams, then you will know whats in store for F1 if guys like RBR and Ferrari fail to keep Merc accountable, and choose to differentiate themselves politically. Because at the end of the day, diversity is the only thing that will keep F1 interesting, and innovative, not a bunch of peeps ‘just following orders’.
Esteban
26th June 2024, 18:22
I can’t believe I read this nonsense here.
Dex
26th June 2024, 22:28
I think that guy is a troll, all his comments seem equally “unusual”. But then, with some narratives it’s difficult to differentiate between sarcasm and being serious.
Nick T.
27th June 2024, 3:09
He’s Team LH and believes all of F1 is against Lewis. There’s nothing wrong with diversity, but what does “diversity” even mean in this context? I guess diversity here means diversity of teams’ political and on-track MO with the implication being that they’re in the practice of disadvantaging one driver over another and treating junior or customer teams unfairly somehow…or some such other nonsense.
K (@sugoi)
26th June 2024, 12:05
Williams repeatedly switch Sargeant in search for floor missing downforce.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
26th June 2024, 12:13
Dude, Where’s My Downforce?
Nick T.
27th June 2024, 3:09
COTD
M2X
26th June 2024, 13:11
Its must be the pinnacle of frustration that something was designed to fit and function in a certain way, possible has fit in the past is no longer fitting.
However when parts that are exposed to high G forces need to be installed to micron precision perhaps those parts should be designed with a higher margin of error.
Leroy (@g-funk)
26th June 2024, 14:56
Where are the conspiracy theories about Logan’s missing downforce! Why isn’t he getting equal treatment as Albon?! ;)
Nick T.
27th June 2024, 3:10
pcxmac obliged you above to make his Lewis rants look more credible and unbiased.
I have an opinion
26th June 2024, 15:29
Sainz – this is not the team for you.
Nick T.
27th June 2024, 3:11
So, you’ve told us. He won’t be reading this forum just so you know.
Optimaximal (@optimaximal)
26th June 2024, 16:10
Isn’t Sargeant still driving the compromised tub that Albon originally wrote off?
AlanD
26th June 2024, 18:48
Does anyone know how they measure the downforce outside of a windtunnel?
Sham (@sham)
26th June 2024, 22:15
Load sensors on various components.
MadMax (@madmax)
26th June 2024, 19:08
My bet would be on the chassis. Wouldn’t be the first time, some hidden damage badly impacts a cars performance, only to be detected months later.
Nick T.
27th June 2024, 3:15
Let’s be honest, even if Logan is driving a compromised car, he’s been terrible since out of the gate before there were any chassis swaps. Maybe, he’d be driving at Zhou level without compromised equipment. He would and he will still be gone.
Osnola
27th June 2024, 9:06
I know the answer to that one .hint..it starts with a S
Hint two: LS