08/11/2004
NEWS STORY
Since Antonia Terzi resigned her position as chief aerodynamicist at WilliamsF1, there has been much speculation as to the reason for her decision, and also whether she 'jumped' or was pushed.
The reason for much of the speculation is due to the failure of the radical 'hammerhead' nose that the FW26 sported for much of the season.
However, talking to Bob Constanduros, WilliamsF1 technical director Sam Michael was at pains not to blame Terzi for the 'shortcomings' of that nose.
"It would be unfair to lay all that on Antonia's feet," said the Australian, "because although people concentrate on it, as far as we're concerned it's just a part on the car.
"There are various points where it was better or worse," he continued, "and now the car works better without it. But it's because it's so visual that people concentrate on it, whereas in reality it's no different changing a flip-up or a chimney or something like that. And if you look at our flip-ups and chimneys on the side pod we changed them five or six times a year.
"We went backwards from one spec to the other depending on what the car's doing and what downforce level it's in, but nobody ever says it look like Williams are confused, that's seen as normal development.
"But when you change a nose pack, it's 'ah-ha, they must have made a big mistake on that'. In reality it just works better but at the start of the year it was definitely working better with that type of nose. But that comes from a group of aerodynamicists, it's not really fair that that's all down to Antonia."