AT&T Williams F1

Williams F1 exists solely to go racing. But the effort that goes into the achievement can often be overlooked. Here, we unveil the work that goes on behind the scenes in a series of impressive facts and figures.

The Team

• This season the team will practice an average of 500 pitstops over the year
• The pitstop crew take approximately 5 seconds to re-boot and re-fuel with 20people in the pit box, less time than it takes to pour a beer!
• Over the winter, the team covered almost 15,000 testing kilometres on 7 different tracks preparing the FW30 for the season ahead
• 21 tonnes of equipment are sent to each Grand Prix
• This year, the team will produce 6 FW30 chassis
• AT&T will assist the team send 10 gigabytes of data from the race track to the factory and back again, equivalent to 15 CD-ROMs or the total amount of bandwidth used per household over a whole month
• The team takes 100's of spare parts to each race
• Over a race weekend, 100 radios will be used in team communications
• Williams' 4 race trucks will travel a total distance of 12,000kms transporting the team's equipment across Europe
• 340 visa applications are made over the course of a season for Williams personnel
• The team's motorhome takes 6 men 36 man hours to construct
• The smallest garage the team will have to work out of this season will be 12 metres by 10 metres, the largest 21 metres by 18 metres
• One of the team's transporters is converted into office space over a GP weekend to house the team's 10 engineers who travel to every race.

The Car

• 520 people at Williams F1 have dedicated their lives to the production of the Williams-Toyota FW30
• 35,000 man hours went into the production of the FW30
• Design work for the Williams-Toyota FW30 commenced in April of 2007
• The FW30 had its first wind tunnel run in June 2007
• It takes four days to build the car from a bare chassis to a fully operational race car
• After each race, the car will be stripped down and 150 diagnostic checks will be carried out before the next event
• The FW30 will benefit from the team's seven speed, seamless shift gearbox. The drivers will typically change gear up to 2,800 times per Grand Prix. At twistier circuits, such as Monaco, this number can increase to 4,000 times
• The gearbox will reach temperatures of 150°C during a race
• The FW30's brake discs can exceed temperatures of 1,000°C
• The FW30 will generate lateral accelerations of 5G during cornering
• Tyres can reach temperatures of 160°C
• A Formula One engine weighs just 95kg
• 0 – 60mph in 2.3 seconds
• 100mph in 3.8 seconds
• 0mph to 100mph and back to 0mph again in 5.5 seconds
• Top speed back to 0mph in 3 seconds
• The FW30 will reach its top speed at Monza where the drivers will record 220mph around the track
• The energy required to slow a car from 315kph to 185kph is the same amount needed to make an elephant jump 10 metres in the air!

The Driver

• The team's drivers will get through 64 sets of overalls, 32 pairs of race boots, 112 sets of fireproof undergarments, 142 pairs of race gloves and 150 balaclavas over just one season
• Both race drivers will have a minimum of 2 helmets at their disposal this season
• The drivers will sign approximately 250 autographs at every Grand Prix
• The drivers will carry out an average of 20 interviews per race
• A Formula One driver burns approximately 600 calories per Grand Prix and loses on average two kilograms in weight
• During a race, the average temperature in the cockpit will reach 50 °C
• Drivers' heart rates reach peaks of 190 beats per minute during a Grand Prix.