The Aero Adjustment of the Year

Williams arrived in Monza with its version of a low downforce rear wing. Surely costing a significant number of dollars to develop, it was positioned several centimetres below the top of the endplates so it could produce the highest top speed down the straight while still benefiting from reducing drag due to a large number of pressure relieving slots.

At the same time, Williams’s Valtteri Bottas removed two plastic vents from the top of his helmet for qualifying, telling his trainer it would make a difference of perhaps one-thousandth of a second. At the end of Q3, he beat Ricciardo by to the fourth starting spot by 0.001s. In comparison, teammate Felipe Massa, with vents attached clocked the highest trap speed at 355kph but did not get through to Q3. The sound you might hear are 12 Williams aerodynamicists slapping their foreheads in tandem.

Now, on to Singapore, and the mysteries and conundrums of the night circuit.