From Williams
Patrick Head, the director of engineering of the Williams Formula 1 team talks about the design of the six-wheel FW07D that never raced.
Prior to the 1982 World Championship, the team designed, fabricated and tested a six-wheel F1 car.
“When the flat-bottomed cars came in, engine power suddenly took on much greater significance and that favoured the turbos from Renault, Ferrari and BMW. We didn’t have a turbo in those days. We’d had a brief discussion with BMW about using theirs, but thought it too pricey so relied on the Cosworth DFV that we’d had in 1979, with less than 500 horsepower,” Head recalls
“We had to think of others ways in which to increase our straight-line speed and we focused on reducing the frontal area. In those days the rear wheels were enormous and caused a large proportion of our aerodynamic drag. The lift-to-drag ratio on our FW08 was about 7.5 and Frank Dernie came up with a quarter-scale model of the six-wheeler, which used four front wheels at the back, with a lift-to-drag ratio of about 12.5. So, clearly, the idea had a lot of potential,” he added.
“We produced a test car, which was a converted FW07 chassis. This first iteration of the six-wheeler was called the FW07D and it used four Goodyear front tyres at the rear. The car ran only once because we then updated an FW08 chassis to accommodate four wheels at the back and called it the FW08B.”
Patrick Head, the director of engineering of the Williams Formula 1 team talks about the design of the six-wheel FW07D that never raced.
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| Alan Jones driving the FW07D. (Photo: Williams) |
Prior to the 1982 World Championship, the team designed, fabricated and tested a six-wheel F1 car.
“When the flat-bottomed cars came in, engine power suddenly took on much greater significance and that favoured the turbos from Renault, Ferrari and BMW. We didn’t have a turbo in those days. We’d had a brief discussion with BMW about using theirs, but thought it too pricey so relied on the Cosworth DFV that we’d had in 1979, with less than 500 horsepower,” Head recalls
“We had to think of others ways in which to increase our straight-line speed and we focused on reducing the frontal area. In those days the rear wheels were enormous and caused a large proportion of our aerodynamic drag. The lift-to-drag ratio on our FW08 was about 7.5 and Frank Dernie came up with a quarter-scale model of the six-wheeler, which used four front wheels at the back, with a lift-to-drag ratio of about 12.5. So, clearly, the idea had a lot of potential,” he added.
“We produced a test car, which was a converted FW07 chassis. This first iteration of the six-wheeler was called the FW07D and it used four Goodyear front tyres at the rear. The car ran only once because we then updated an FW08 chassis to accommodate four wheels at the back and called it the FW08B.”
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| Alan Jones driving the FW07D. (Photo: Williams) |