Here we go again, another season of Formula 1 images starting in the best place on the calendar, Australia! You can relive the 2015 season opener after the break with our gallery of 89 images, all clickable to 2560px mega image sizing.
Tag: FW37
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F1 winter testing: Barcelona II
Formula 1 pre-season testing is all done and the post-rationalising from the teams telling us what a great job they were able to do is well underway. As the saying goes, when the flag drops the bullshit stops and we’ve got less than two weeks until the Australian Grand Prix.
After the break is a list of times for the final four days of testing in Barcelona. Mercedes AMG and Williams shared the spoils with their drivers setting the fastest times across the week.
Nico Rosberg claims the title of fastest man in pre-season with his 1:22.792 lap on day two, a full 1.2 seconds faster than his nearest challenger on the day.
It’s no surprise, then, that reigning constructors’ champions Mercedes AMG look to be the team to beat once again this season.
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F1 winter testing: Jerez day 2
Sebastian Vettel has kept himself and Ferrari atop the lap charts in Jerez overnight, going fastest (1:20.984) for the second day running. The four-time champ knows it’s far too early to get excited about his season’s prospects yet, but admits “we have a good basis to work from.”
Inclement weather late in the day interrupted proceedings although some teams did get some testing done on intermediate tyres.
Before the rain set in Sauber also showed it’s relative pace on day 1 was no fluke, with rookie Felipe Nasr (1:21.867) posting the second best time during his first day as a bona fide F1 driver. Around half a second back was Valtteri Bottas (1:22.319) for Williams in the first of the Mercedes powered cars.
Lewis Hamilton enjoyed his first day out for Mercedes AMG in 2015, racking up 91 laps, more than anyone else and laying down the fourth quickest time of the day (1:22.490).
The baby of the bunch, 17-year-old Max Verstappen, managed 73 useful laps for Toro Rosso and was fifth fastest (1:24.167). In its track debut with the Mercedes power unit Lotus notched up 41 laps with Pastor Maldonado at the wheel. His best time (1:25.802) was the last of the meaningful laps with Jenson Button (1:54.655) and Daniil Kvyat (No time) having difficult days.
McLaren hopes to have a better day tomorrow with Yasuhisa Arai, Honda’s chief motorsport officer, telling journalists, “Today was another tricky day, but we feel like we’ve overcome the main issue that affected our running during the first two days of the test. For tomorrow, we’re hopeful that we’ve moved on, and that we can get some more laps completed.”
Meanwhile, Daniil Kyvat’s Red Bull career got off to an embarrassing start when he clipped a wall on his out lap and broke the front wing. At this early stage of the year the team did not have a replacement readily available and he had to make do testing other aspects of the car.
Red Bull will have a replacement wing ready for day 3 of testing which begins late tonight (Australian time).
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2015 Williams FW37 revealed
Williams has released this single image of its new FW37 on the morning of its track debut in pre-season testing. Pretty stingy, hey! And it’s not even 2000px in size.
Truth be told, the pictorial offerings from Williams have been pretty tight since Martini began to sponsor them.
It’s okay, there is a video of the car launch, too. Just don’t blink!
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2015 Williams FW37 images revealed
After the Williams FW37 broke cover yesterday we had hoped we’d be able to bring you a great selection of 2560px mega images to you this morning. Alas, we’ve got two new pics we’ve nicked from twitter, a dodgy video animation and a press release from the notoriously image shy Williams Martini Racing outfit.
However, Pat Symonds, Chief Technical Officer, does give us some insight into the FW37: “The notion for the FW37 was to look closely at the FW36 and its performances.
“We then went about recognising what had worked well and identifying and resolving the areas that we felt needed to be improved. Although the aerodynamics of the car were impressive there is always room for improvement particularly as we handle the new 2015 nose regulations.
“The desire to beat Ferrari to third place in the Constructors’ in 2014 meant we pushed our development through to late autumn, but the size of the team is now at a point where it was able to sustain this development whilst still working on the FW37.
“We felt we came up against design barriers in the FW36 and so took the opportunity to remove those barriers for the benefit of the performance. The FW36 carried a reasonable amount of ballast, so we were able to make alterations to the design for added performance without the fear of adding excessive mass.
“The change in regulations offered us a slight headache. The new front bulkhead and nose geometry had much more of an impact than we had initially anticipated and the effect on the aero was profound. The team have worked hard on pulling back the deficit these regulations have made for us.”
We’ll bring you more detail on the FW37 when we can.
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2015 Williams FW37 breaks cover
The 2015 Williams FW37 has quite literally broken cover and will be revealed in full in the latest issue of F1 Racing magazine.
We can see the long droopy nose from the FW36 has been replaced by a stumpy version, which is hopefully the first small step in seeing a grid of F1 cars that we can finally stop laughing at.
We’ll have more for you on the FW37 when we can, along with coverage of all the F1 team launches which will be kicking off later today with the Force India VJM08.
Bruce Thomson is an all round good guy. We know this because he hits our inbox from time to time with some seriously cool automotive drawings. Over the last few days he’s been sharing with the world a few illustrations showing how he would like the F1 cars of 2015 to look.
So far he’s given us the Ferrari F15, McLaren MP4-30, the Mercedes AMG W06 and the Red Bull Racing RB11.
If you follow those links then you’ll be treated to much larger versions of these images where you can further appreciate the detail.
Even better, there’s the promise of a Lotus and Williams concept to follow. Keep up the great work Bruce!
UPDATE 11 January: Now with Williams FW37 and Lotus E23 concepts.