High res look at the FW33

Williams today released their 2011 car, the FW33. The car at Valencia this week is running a temporary livery, however it's much darker than what's been seen from Williams in a long time. As such there's only a couple of studio shots that have been released thus far, and one imagines that once they've designed and applied the permanent livery, they'll go back and take several more. All images are with the kind permission of www.attwilliams.com.

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Looking at the car from side on the first thing you notice is how short the front wing is. Compared to the other 2011 cars it is especially noticeable. Also the engine cover doesn't look to be as high as the other teams. At the rear of the car they've introduced a Red Bull style pull rod suspension. In conjunction with this Williams have managed to construct their smallest gearbox yet. With the new regulation stating gearboxes must now last 5 races reliability is more important than ever. But technical director Sam Michael didn't appear to be concerned saying "I’m not expecting it to be a problem because the new gearbox has the same stiffness characteristics as the old one".

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Unlike most other people, Michael doesn't seem to think the moveable rear wing will have a significant impact on overtaking. Michaels point was that you can only use it when you're within a second of the car in front, "which might not be until halfway down a straight, depending on where the FIA places the timing loop that activates it. That will take a few races to fine tune.". Michael also said he doesn't think the drag reduction is big enough to provide the significant change the FIA expects it too.

Overall, the talk out of Williams is promising. Rubens Barrichello described the design as "aggressive" several weeks ago, and the team today boasted that the R&D put into this car is "unprecedented". They're also a development program that will introduce upgrades at every race. Quite a claim, but Frank Williams described the challenge as not being easy, "but we hope this car will take us closer to the leaders than we were in 2010."