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Williams running problematic rear wing from Silverstone

09:28, 28 Jul 2018

byJake Williams-Smith

Williams has reverted back to the high downforce rear wing the team used at Silverstone which caused multiple spins for both Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin. Having removed it for the German Grand Prix the team have gone back to running the old wing for this weekend.

Chief technical officer Paddy Lowe explained to RaceFans that the rear wing was not the sole culprit for the spins, but rather a "side effect" originating from other updates the team had brought to the race.

“The problem we had in Silverstone was primarily a result of some change we made to the floor in the diffuser area, some fences,” he said.

“In the position we’re in we were very aggressively, let’s say, with our attempts to improve performance. We used Fridays intensively to test parts and work with new parts.

“In Silverstone we made a step on Friday with modifications to the diffuser which were actually an improvement in cornering, took them forward to the race, but they had a side-effect of putting the car intermittently into stall in relation to use of DRS. It was effectively a side-effect of a step we’d introduced for cornering performance.

“So very unfortunate, very visible consequences to have to correct that for the race starting with cars in the pit lane. but we had no choice. It was something that had been entirely unexpected as a side-effect.”

Sergey Sirotkin confirmed that the wing was now working properly and that he had no issues with running the older specification and that work done on other parts of the car have worked.

“We don’t see so far any single issue of what we had in Silverstone.

“A little bit around the floor. A little bit of set-up of the wing itself. A few very little things but altogether seems like it makes the job.”