"More scope" for Williams "fine tuning" through updates

Williams

"More scope" for Williams "fine tuning" through updates

Williams have edged closer to the pack across 2020

Sam Hall

Friday 6 November 2020 11:15

Williams driver Nicholas Latifi believes updates across the season have provided "more scope" to "fine-tune" the FW43 at race weekends.

While Williams remains rooted to the foot of the constructors' standings as the only team yet to register a point, Latifi is confident Williams is heading in the correct direction with its developments.

“[It is] just little bits here and there," said the Canadian. "We’ve had different rear wings with different drag levels depending on the characteristics of the track.

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"It’s just more options available than what we had last year really that has given us a bit more scope and, although the car is still inherently quite draggy, that was a big issue of the car last year, we now have a much bigger range to fine-tune it.

“If anything, in the past races, a strength of ours has actually been the straight-line speed relevant to the cars relative to the cars that we want to fight with which is Haas and Alfa [Romeo].”

Despite constructors' champions Mercedes announcing it will not be developing its 2020 car further, Williams has no option but to press ahead with developments, as scoring just four-points would be enough at present to jump Haas in the standings and claim the increased prize money that comes with ninth place.

He added: “We’ve had updates across both areas of mechanical and aero throughout the season so, in general, we felt from the beginning of the year that we were quite weak, or excessively weak, in the slow corner range just from how the car reacts through the corners.

“As drivers we always refer to it as the ‘through corner balance’ and how consistent it was from your turning point to the apex and to your entry.

"It’s just little updates through the year, mechanical updates, that have improved this and made it more driveable and, obviously likewise from an aerodynamic point of view, it is clear that from the beginning of the year the car was a massive step forward compared to last year."

Before you go...

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