WilliamsF1 launched its 2006 season race car, the FW28, at its headquarters near Oxford this afternoon. The FW28 is a manifestly purposeful race car, its defining visual cue being the aggressive barbed sting on the back of the engine cover.

The car is both a response to circumstance, including the shifting technical regulations and the new primary partnerships the team has forged with engine supplier Cosworth and tyre company Bridgestone, as well as being its own clear statement of intent.

Clearly the biggest transition is the shift away from 3.0l V10 motive power in favour of a 2.4l V8, and in Williams' case, the new partnership with Cosworth. With the associated power losses all teams will encounter, all Formula One designers have been tackling a demand for higher aerodynamic efficiency to help compensate. In the case of the FW28, this became a fundamental design parameter for the car and is reflected in many ways across the aerodynamic strategy of the car, visible particularly in the design of the rear wing with its decambered tips. The target in this area was to maintain downforce while shedding drag at the wing tips.

To support this strategy, a tall sidepod concept was adopted which allowed a larger undercut and therefore smooth and efficient air flow to the rear of the car. While designers have been forced to grapple with recouping power losses through aerodynamic efficiencies, the FIA dealt another blow to designers by imposing a new restriction on bodywork to the front of the car, removing the bottom parts of any forward barge boards and, in the process, dramatically altering flow dynamics around the front of the car. The response in the Williams design office has been to pursue a zero keel option to the management of the front wishbones. This area of design has been one of fundamental contention and revision across the Formula One paddock, but the zero keel solution now clearly provides the most efficient aerodynamic solution. In addition, the team has progressed the cascaded front wing, trialled successfully in the last two Grands Prix of 2005.

The revised three part qualifying format, essentially with the first two elements on low fuel and the final session based on race fuel, has had major implications for the approach to 2006 race strategy and in turn, with the design and all-important capacity of the fuel cell.

Equally, the regulators' decision – after a season of outlawing the practice – to re-enshrine tyre changes has a clear line of influence over the design of the elements of the car that respond to the changing parameters of tyre wear, fundamentally in relation to the mechanical set-up of suspension elements and weight distribution.

If the external factors were not sufficient to keep the design office at Williams busy with the incarnation of the FW28, the technically motivated switch to Bridgestone tyres (which the team last raced in 2000) has demanded a complete revision of weight distribution across the car and a re-formatting of suspension geometry in order to harmonise the dynamic characteristics of the FW28 with the qualities of the Bridgestone tyre. Technical Director, Sam Michael, commented, "The FW28 has been a large departure from previous Williams' designs due in part to new aerodynamic efficiency targets, but also the mechanical challenges of changing to Bridgestone tyres and Cosworth's V8 engine. It has been a really interesting car to design and I believe that will continue to be the case during its development in 2006."