23/06/2023
NEWS STORY
Buoyed by the upgrades introduced in Canada, James Vowles believes that there is more to come from the Williams.
Though the upgrades, which included a new floor, engine cover, rear wing and rear suspension, were only available to Alex Albon, the team was pleased with the result, the youngster having made it into Q3 and subsequently finishing seventh in the race... albeit courtesy of a bravura performance from the driver and some canny strategic calls.
Nonetheless, team boss Vowles is delighted with the upgrade and though he understands the situation in Montreal was very much about the special circumstances, he is confident that there is more to come from the FW45.
"I don't think we really have enough to say ‘has it reached its full potential?'," admitted the Briton. It certainly looks that way on the data from free practice but we'll need more tracks and time to ascertain that.
"Is there more performance to come? I suspect so," he added. "Every time you introduce a package to the car, it takes a few iterations to get it absolutely nailed on in terms of the set up window you want to be operating in. So expect more to come across the next few races.
"The upgrades that went on the car are ones that are generating downforce, just vertical load on the car," he explained. "That will, depending on the track, give you more or less performance fundamentally, just depending on how sensitive it is to that downforce number.
"But ultimately, it will make us quicker at all tracks. However the base property that we have in the car, where it is better at tracks with good straight-line content, will remain the same."
Asked about the correlation between the simulator and the mixed conditions of Montreal, he admitted: "It's difficult to answer the question fully as we stand here, simply because it was very limited amount of dry running in free practice and the race was still interfered by other circumstances.
"Typically to correlate a package you need a good amount of laps in Iso conditions to properly understand where you have."