F1 News: Williams Chief Confirms Upgrades Are Coming After Shocking Floor Photos Revealed

Williams team principal James Vowles has given a full analysis on the FW45 floor after the F1 World was shocked by their simple design.

Williams team chief James Vowles has spoken about the photos of the floor of Logan Sargeant's car at the Spanish Grand Prix which shocked fans. Taking the opportunity to explain where the British team are at, Vowles confirmed that there are more upgrades to come over the next three races. 

Fans were surprised to see the stark contrast between the floor of the dominant Red Bull RB19 and the Williams FW45. The Austrian team has an incredibly intricate floor whereas, the floor of the Williams was severely lacking in detail. 

James discusses the FW45 floor and much more 🗣️

The latest @krakenfx Vowles Verdict has arrived! 🙌#WeAreWilliams #SpanishGP pic.twitter.com/QEiDYdWUUT

— Williams Racing (@WilliamsRacing) June 6, 2023

In the video posted to the teams social media, Vowles analyses the situation. He explained:

“Obviously those have been compared to photography taken of our competitors just a few weeks ago.

“I think one thing to point out is they’re a little bit deceptive. What’s happened here is it’s very focussed on that rear diffuser ramp, unlike the other photos that perhaps focussed more on the floor and the mid-floor where you can actually, within the regulations, have more detail.”

The team chief went on to add that although some of it could be the photography, they are clearly lacking in detail. He continued:

“We are clearly lacking detail relative to our competitors.

“But you wouldn’t have needed the underside of the floor to know that, you can see that from the times. That’s fundamentally a feature of balance characteristics and the car’s performance and downforce as well at the same time. And a lot of that is being generated by the floor.”

Vowles also explained that simply copying another team won't help them. He added:

“Understanding what your competitors do by getting an image of it and simply copying it won’t help you.

“It may give you an instantaneous leg-up, an understanding of where you should be moving forward, but if you don’t understand the science and the reasoning behind it and the flow dynamics, you’ll just have a moment in time rather than an idea of how to consistently develop to become not just as good as them, but better.

“Furthermore, whatever you’ve seen on a competitor is at least six to eight weeks out of date, and where they are now is further forward. So the clues behind it or the key behind it all is actually understanding why they develop the floor in the way that they have and what can we learn from it and apply to where we are today to advance our learning and understanding.

“That is going on all the time. But what you can’t do is go away [with] some deep-rooted methods and systems that you need to actually understand how to generate downforce in an efficient manner for the car you have. So our prioritisation is [to] learn from others where we need to but make sure we carry on developing on our build cycle the way we know we’ll develop over time into a faster and faster car.

“We will introduce upgrades sometime over the next three races or so, potentially in one go or spread out across those. Some of them you’ll see, some of them perhaps less visible.”