Williams is struggling with its Coanda exhausts
During the first two races of the year, the Williams did not appear very competitive, and the problem seems to come from the Coanda exhausts introduced by the team this season, which they have not yet managed to master perfectly.
The Williams team introduced Coanda-effect exhausts – which direct the exhaust gases towards the diffuser – on the FW35, their car for the 2013 season. It is the first time the Grove team has used such a system on their cars, and so far the results are not very convincing.
The blue and white single-seater hasn’t been very competitive during the first two races, and this is mainly due to the Coanda-type exhausts, at least that’s what the team’s technical director, Mike Coughlan, told ESPN. « We need to go further and have a more consistent platform for our drivers. »
Coughlan also hypothesized a possible rollback, using the exhausts from the 2012 FW34, although he thinks it won’t happen for the Grand Prix for the moment: « We currently believe that an FW34-type single-seater would be faster. I don’t think we will revert to an FW34, but we could return to FW34-type exhausts and use Fridays to conduct cross-tests between the cars. »
The next Friday practice sessions could therefore look like full-scale tests between Maldonado and Bottas, each driving slightly different cars to see which system is more effective or to better understand the functioning of these Coanda exhausts in order to make them work optimally.
