The updates Williams hopes will lead to a points-scoring return

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the Williams livery design department. It’s not hard to imagine a mood board consisting of the 1989 Coloni C3, Birmingham City’s 1992-93 kit and Chase Elliott’s 2018 NAPA-liveried Camaro, given it seems they’ve all merged to produce the Grove squad’s new Formula 1 livery with a hint of TV static.

Williams’ new livery is admittedly very Marmite indeed, looking like Salvador Dali’s interpretation of an early-2000s Sauber. The FW43B sadly loses the neat white and blue garnish for something that resembles three liveries in one, perhaps covering up the lack of sponsorship adorning the car for the new season aside from the Nicholas Latifi-affiliated businesses peppering the livery.

Not that one wishes to ridicule the work of the livery designers, and as long as the team likes it then that’s all that matters – but since this writer is being paid to have an opinion on things, and not to sit on the fence like he usually does, it just seems like the individual parts of the car don’t really mesh together. But maybe we’ll get used to it.

Paintwork aside, there are some new bits and pieces on Williams’ launch renders worth talking about, as the team has set about embellishing its non-scoring FW43 with further bells and whistles to hopefully elevate George Russell and Latifi into points-scoring cameos throughout the year.

The FW43B features a new front wing, which seems to have undergone plenty of development over the off-season. Last year, Williams spent most of the year with a development of its end-of-year 2019 wing, having redesigned the upper flaps to feature two split ends on the third and fourth elements. Those are gone, as the tips have been drawn further downwards, sitting behind a newly reprofiled mainplane which features a greater degree of curvature than before. The wing sweeps upwards from the central mounting point, creating a spoon-shaped arrangement to the array of flaps.

Williams FW43B detail

Photo by: Williams

These changes should help the aerodynamicists focus the airflow outwards, as is often required to keep air away from the front wheels which creates a difficult mass of turbulence to untangle. It does seem that Williams has put a lot of focus here, especially as it seems that the team has elected to retain the same nose structure used last season.

With 2021’s changes to the floor and diffuser, a prevailing trend appears to be in putting the focus on the front half of the car to clear up the impact of the airflow earlier on, so the reduced available toys at the rear half can be employed to simply manage any changes thereafter. With its bargeboards, Williams seems to have shuffled the main body backwards – something Mercedes did in 2020, to ensure that the floor is better protected from the turbulence produced by the front end of the car.

Along the top edge, the part at which the bargeboards clip onto the monocoque is raised, and the redesigned slots along the top edge should play more nicely with the air directed downwards by the upper suspension wishbone. These slotted fins are larger in width compared to the FW43, and are more aggressively angled outwards to direct that airflow around a larger curve.

As we lauded Aston Martin on Wednesday for not playing “hide the floor”, it seems Williams hasn’t explicitly ‘done a Mercedes’ and decided not to show it

The boomerang, mounted to the front of that bargeboard package, also connects up to the sixth sidepod-mounted element rather than the seventh, making way for a thinner seventh member to sit in front. Williams has so far retained the collection of vertical elements here, with the front three sweeping underneath the latter three, replicating the effect of the shutter-blind style design that the other teams have gravitated towards. Those latter elements are part of a redesigned turning vane arrangement that now loops around the top of the sidepod, rather than being split into two different pieces.

Williams has retained the ramped sidepods used last season, which shows a clear path for the airflow passing over the top to follow down towards the floor. It’s hard to tell from the gloss layer if the contours of the engine cover remain the same as last year, as the matte paint on the FW43 disguises some of its bulbousness, but Williams has tended in recent years to use a little more of the upper reaches of the car to fit cooling components to cut the sidepod size required.

Williams FW43B detail

Photo by: Williams

The rear wing endplate does feature a nifty little innovation, although figures largely in the same arrangement as the design used last year. By making the endplate thinner, there’s scope to fit in little vortex generators to lift airflow upwards – as can be seen from the three fins at the rear. A fourth has now been added to the front of that, perhaps seeking to help lift any vortices generated on the upper edge. Since the gill-like slots that usually featured in that part of the wing were banned in 2019, there have been few adaptations here until now – so it’s good to see Williams finding something that the other teams haven’t.

As we lauded Aston Martin on Wednesday for not playing “hide the floor”, it seems Williams hasn’t explicitly ‘done a Mercedes’ and decided not to show it. However, it’s very difficult to make out the new toys on the car, especially as the high-resolution images are caked in filters that do just enough to coquettishly obscure the new parts. It does appear as though there’s a fin or two sitting at the back corner, but it’s very difficult to make out the angles or composition. Our attempts to find out what Williams has going on has been stumped by lighting, film grain, or a mixture of both...

Williams isn’t pretending that the FW43B is an all-new machine – admirably sellotaping the B-spec label to its chassis designation – but that also tempers expectations of a sudden turnaround. Last year’s FW43 was far superior to the FW42, yet ironically managed no points as the toothpaste-liveried Rokit-daubed machine managed to score one, but Russell’s frequent appearances in Q2 did underline a far greater baseline.

PLUS: The evidence that shows Williams' F1 recovery is real

With Haas openly not bothering to spend its development tokens for 2021, Williams has a shot at reopening its points-scorers account this year. But 2022, again, is where the focus shall fall; Williams will get access to the Mercedes gearboxes and other associated components, freeing up resources to spend on making the most of its extra windtunnel and simulation time available. With those tools, the team should be able to get a handle on the new breed of aero regulations, which should pay back the faith that Dorilton Capital put in the team last year.

Altogether, it looks as though Williams has made sensible developments with its FW43B; while the pay-off will ultimately be limited, there is a good chance that the team can begin to embark on a steady ascent up the F1 hierarchy once more. The team has bounced up and down over the past decade, and nobody would begrudge the team of once more returning to the front – and staying there.

Williams FW43B

Photo by: Williams