[Racer Duck]

2008 Williams breaks cover at Valencia

21 January 2008 / Photos

The Williams team's 2008 season race car, the Williams Toyota FW30, took to the track at the Valencia circuit in Southern Spain this morning for a shakedown prior to starting its winter testing in earnest tomorrow. The team's newly recruited test driver, Nico Hulkenberg, is taking on the responsibility of shaking down the new race car before regular race driver, Nico Rosberg and his team-mate, Kazuki Nakajima, share first assessments of the car from tomorrow onwards.

The car represents a clear engineering philosophy of iteration and progressive development from the competitive and reliable platform of last season's FW29. The team's technical director, Sam Michael explains, "With four years of regulation stability, we have a good basis to be progressive about the development of this season's car. With a good reliability record last year, we have been able to build on this quality while also turning some of our attention to clear performance objectives."

The car retains the general structural and layout philosophy of its forebear, featuring a zero keel and dual pillar rear wing, with notable visual changes including a three plane front wing, increased sidepod top cooling louvres in view of the altered orientation of the water radiators, the sidepod and side impact sails and the increased cockpit sides for compliance with the new driver safety requirements.

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