Williams FW06

The Williams FW06 was the Williams Grand Prix Engineering service vehicle in the 1978 Formula 1 season and at the start of the 1979 Formula 1 season .

Development history and technology

When Williams began developing the FW06 in the winter of 1977/78, Lotus had already initiated the future of racing car construction in Formula 1 with the Type 78 and its ground effect . At Williams, however, Patrick Head took a conservative approach when designing the vehicle. The bodies had a conventional wedge shape and the suspensions were taken from the FW05 , which was originally the Hesketh 308 , and adapted. In this Formula 1 model, too, the engine was the DFL V8 engine from Cosworth .

Racing history

In 1978 Frank Williams only used a 1-car team in Formula 1. The Australian Alan Jones , who had driven for Shadow in 1977 and won his first Formula 1 Grand Prix in Austria , was hired as the driver .

The FW06 made its racing debut in January 1978 at the Argentine Grand Prix in Buenos Aires . After finishing 14th in qualifying, Jones retired on lap 36 due to a defect in the fuel system. The first finish came 14 days later with 11th place at the Brazilian Grand Prix .

The tires were a big problem this year. Goodyear provided only a few teams with tires for qualifying training. Williams wasn't one of them. Since Alan Jones had to compete in qualifying training with racing tires, he was mostly only able to qualify for the back half of the field. In the races, however, all teams had the same tire quality. Alan Jones was able to make up for this shortcoming again and again with great driving effort.

In the third race of the season, the South African Grand Prix , Jones succeeded in showing the potential of the driver and the vehicle with fourth place right at the start of the season. At the race in Long Beach , Jones was even in second place at times before engine misfires forced him to drive slowly.

The French Grand Prix in July 1978 ended in fifth Jones and the Grand Prix of Germany in sixth. The best result of the year and the best result for the FW06 in the Formula 1 World Championship was achieved by Jones at the US Grand Prix when he finished second 20 seconds behind Carlos Reutemann in a Ferrari 312T3 . The World Championship finished Jones twelfth; Williams came in tenth among the manufacturers (constructor's championship).

As the successor model, the FW07 , was completed in the spring of 1979, drove Jones and the new has come into the team Clay Regazzoni the FW06 at the first four races of the season in 1979. Jones was doing with the third place finish at the US Grand Prix West again the performance of the driver and the racing car.

Aurora AFX Formula 1 Series

In mid-1979, the three chassis were sold to private drivers who used the racing cars in the Aurora AFX Formula 1 series .

literature

David Hodges: Racing cars from A – Z after 1945. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-613-01477-7 .

Web links

Commons : Williams FW06 - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files