Williams Blog: Week 23

Posted on Tuesday 02 Jun 2009 and tagged with blog, team.

Rob Gearing is our Head of Vehicle Dynamics and therefore responsible for all simulation work undertaken at the factory. With testing as restricted as it is, his job, and that of his team, is one of the most crucial in helping the Design Office decide which direction to take with a new car and to assist with car development throughout the course of the season. Here, he recounts his week in the latest of our Williams Blogs.

“The race team came back from Monaco at the start of the week. There weren’t too many issues that concerned us from the race weekend, but we had made a small change to the set-up of the suspension specifically for Monaco so at the beginning of the week we checked the data to make sure that it had worked as it should. As it had, that was all we had to cover off from that race.

In the Vehicle Dynamics team, our main focus at this time of year is to re-focus our efforts towards next year’s car, in this case, the FW32, Regulations for 2010 are still in a state of flux, but those which have been laid down are really interesting and are certainly making our jobs as challenging as ever. There are some rules which are a complete step away from what we’ve had before. We could see moveable rear wings, for example, while other areas could just be modified slightly, like KERS.

Because a Formula One car is such an integrated machine, new parts can’t just be “bolted on” anymore; they have to be fully integrated into the design process right from the beginning, and that’s where simulation comes in. Our team can carry out all of the necessary simulation work before the parts go into design, which helps the designers make the correct choices when it comes to the direction they take, which in turn saves everyone a lot of time.

When it comes to how we simulate component behaviours, some of the simple questions can be answered using the tools we have already, like certain software programmes and the simulator itself but, with the harder items we actually have to write new software programmes and modify our vehicle model in order to carry out the work. At the moment, the Vehicle Dynamics team is doing exactly that, writing new software to evaluate new 2010 components.

This week, we’ve been concentrating on the more traditional design aspects of the FW32 as well. We’re at the stage where we’re having weekly design meetings, which I’ve contributed to from a vehicle dynamics perspective. I always try to give as much information as I can at these meetings so that the designers have plenty of data at their disposal based on the various different configurations we’ve tested.

Another important item that has come to light this week is how the front tyres might change for 2010. These early indicators from Bridgestone are crucial because the tyres are critical to performance, as we’ve seen in the last year with the change from groove tyres to slicks. As a result, we have also been looking at simulating how the new tyre characteristics will influence the overall design of the car.

The 2010 regulations, while they’ve been published, are still up in the air. On the one hand it’s interesting to have new rules and to start working on them, but because they aren’t set yet you never know what could happen. We just work from the assumption that what we have we will go ahead. If anything changes, we will adjust accordingly."

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