1997 Williams FW19

The Williams FW19 was raced during the 1997 Formula One Season and was the car that provided Villeneuve with a World Championship victory. The three-liter V10 engine was a Renault RS9 unit set at a 72-degree angle.

At the conclusion of the season, Renault withdrew from Formula One competition. Another blow for the team was Adrian Newey's departure which occurred the prior year for McLaren in the 1998 season.

The FW19 scored nine wins due to excellent driving and a reliable, fast car.

By Daniel Vaughan | Feb 2007

Throughout the 1990s, there were really only a couple of dominant teams in Formula One. There was Benetton, and then there was Williams. Paired with Renault engines, Williams would become synonymous with World Championship. Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Damon Hill would all secure titles driving FW cars during this period. Amazingly, Jacques Villeneuve would prove to be the last one, to date, to achieve the honor while at the wheel of a Williams. The car that would take him to that glory would be the FW19.

The family lineage would be strong. It would all start in 1991 when Williams unveiled its new FW14. The combined effort of Patrick Head and Adrian Newey, the FW14 would be highly advanced and would be the first for the team to feature a semi-automatic gearbox. But this would be just the beginning.

In addition to Newey's aerodynamic design, Williams would make the FW14B, the follow-on design for 1992, the most technically-advanced car on the grid. For a team that had just introduced a semi-automatic gearbox on its cars the year before, Williams would more than outdo itself by building one that featured active suspension, traction control and anti-lock brakes. The result would be a dominant season in which the team would win 10 races out of 16 and a pace that would often translate itself into a gain of around 2 seconds per lap over its competitors.

The FW15C would pick up right where the FW14B left off. Scoring 10 wins over the course of the 1993 season, the 15C matched the success of its predecessors. Unfortunately, it only made Williams an even bigger target.

New regulations aimed at ending Williams' dominance would make such aids as active suspension, traction control and the full-automatic transmission outlawed. The much more 'passive' FW16 would prove to be a handful to drive in the early part of the season. The inherent instability would result in that dark moment at Imola where Aryton Senna would lose his life after striking the wall at Tamburello.

One of the issues with the FW16 would be aerodynamically and the fix to this issue would include raising the front nose of the car from what it had been. This would only get higher in seasons to come. In any event, the much-maligned FW16 would come online toward the end of the season and would secure the manufacturers' title for Williams, the third in a row for the team.

In 1990, Tyrrell had introduced a Formula One car with a high nose. The car was not a front-runner, and therefore, did not capture as much attention from teams as what it otherwise may have. However, Adrian Newey would recognize the advantages having come from March and Leyton House, another team having a very limited budget. Due to budget constraints, Newey would have to get on using innovation as the means to make up the performance gaps.

Moving to Williams, the nose of the FW cars would begin to rise up in the air. However, it would not be until the nose was positioned that little bit higher after Imola in 1994 that the advantages really began to be understood. Decades had been spent trying to feed airflow over the top of the car past the cockpit and the driver's helmet. Newey would realize this was a losing cause. Not only would a high nose allow more airflow to the radiators, it would also enable more to flow around the sides and the underside of the car in an effort to increase downforce. Additionally, a raised nose reduced the frontal area of the turbulent section around the cockpit and driver's helmet. This obviously increased aerodynamic efficiency by reducing drag.

This high nose would serve as the basis for Williams' next series of challengers and would remain an element in Formula One from 1995 onwards. Combined with the powerful 3.0-liter Renault engine, the FW17 was widely regarded as the best car up and down the pitlane. Unfortunately, some driver errors and mechanical ailments would mean the FW17 would finish 2nd in the constructors' race, as well as in the battle for the drivers' championship. Nonetheless, the basis had been laid for Williams' next run of dominance.

In the latter-half of the 1995 season Williams introduced the FW17B. This would serve as the basis for the FW18 the following year. The biggest noticeable change between the two would come around the cockpit area with the addition of padding around the driver's helmet to help same the lives of the drivers after the deaths of Ratzenberger and Senna in Imola 1994.

The FW18 would easily prove the class of the field in 1996 winning 12 of 16 races at the hands of Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve. Hill would win the World Championship defeating his teammate Villeneuve for the honor. This potent one-two punch also meant Williams easily won the constructors' championship.

Having been, easily, the most dominant team in Formula One in 1996, the foundations were firm for a repeat performance the following year. Adrian Newey would be leaving at the end of the 1996, but had already begun his development of the team's new car. Newey would be contractually prevented from working on the Williams into 1997, but he, Patrick Head, Gavin Fisher and Geoff Willis would be able to work together in creating one last victor for the Williams stable.

The FW19, as it would be called, would be launched at Williams' old factory in Didcot on the 31st of January. It would be the last car to be produced at the Didcot facility before the team made the move to its new facility in Grove. The car would also prove the last to earn a Williams driver, and the team, a championship.

Renault would introduce a new engine, the RS9. All previous Renault engines had been set a V-angle of around 67 degrees. The RS9 would have this angle increased to 71 degrees. This would help to lower the FW19's center of gravity. The engine itself was also shorter in height and lighter. Renault would also work with Williams throughout winter testing to improve the smoothness of the engine throughout acceleration and through the curves. Newey and the team had an improved engine to design the car around. However, after the dominance of the 1996 season, the team really also had its car design.

The nose of the FW19 would be practically the same as its predecessor. The narrow twin-pillars and tall narrow nose would continue to feed airflow to the splitter underneath the driver's legs. Large bargeboards would remain in the car's design to help turn to airflow toward the radiators and around the slightly redesigned sidepods.

The cockpit area would also remain virtually the same with the only noticeable difference being the more oval-shaped airbox positioned over the top of the driver's helmet. The biggest change from the FW19 to its predecessor would be at the back of the car. Besides the back-end of the sidepods being tucked in and tighter, the more compacted transverse gearbox and transmission design would also enable the back of the car to be packaged all the more tightly. By packaging the rear of the car more tightly, more airflow would be enabled to flow through the gap between the rear wheels and the bodywork and over the rear diffuser.

Producing around 740bhp at around 17,000rpm, the FW19 would prove a worthy successor within the Williams' family. Despite some issues throughout the first half of the season, the FW19 would help Jacques Villeneuve to go on to three victories in the first six races. Teammate Heinz-Harald Frentzen would also add his only victory during that run of six races.

The car and team would only get stronger in the last-half of the season with Villeneuve scoring three more victories in seven races and a number of podium finishes between the two drivers. Combining the performance of the car with the likes of Jacques Villeneuve, the FW19 would take its place within Williams' hall of fame earning the Drivers' Championship for Villeneuve and the Constructors' title for Williams.

Wonderfully, yet sadly, the FW19 would not only help Williams go out of the 1997 in style, it would serve as the final champion in a stable filled with thoroughbreds. There may have been more innovative and more successful designs within Williams' ongoing history. However, the FW19 will still hold a very special place in the team's and Formula One's history. It was the car that finally provided a Villeneuve a World Championship, but it was also the last champion in Williams' history. It stands as a gauge, a standard for the next generation of champion thoroughbreds from the Grove outfit.

Sources:
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De Groote, Steven. 'Aerodynamics: Nose Cone Design', (http://www.f1technical.net/articles/11). F1 Technical. http://www.f1technical.net/articles/11. Retrieved 3 April 2014.

'1992: Williams FW14B Renault', (http://www.f1technical.net/f1db/cars/729/williams-fw14b). F1 Technical. http://www.f1technical.net/f1db/cars/729/williams-fw14b. Retrieved 3 April 2014.

'Williams FW15C Renault', (http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/1241/Williams-FW15C-Renault.html). Ultimatecarpage.com: Powered by Knowledge, Driven by Passion. http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/1241/Williams-FW15C-Renault.html. Retrieved 3 April 2014.

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By Jeremy McMullen