F1 | Symonds: “Little time in the gallery to develop the 2017 cars”

Despite his recent farewell to Williams, Pat Symonds spoke about the development of the 2017 cars, underlining how the little time spent inside the wind tunnels heavily influenced the development of the new single-seaters. The regulations were completed too late and Pirelli's delays on wind tunnel compound models affected development at CFD. According to Symonds, a regulatory change of this type, although interesting and full of ideas for enthusiasts, needed to be managed differently and with much more careful planning of new features.

Here are the words of Pat Symonds to Autosport: “The 2017 regulations are certainly very interesting, but we didn't have enough time to work in the wind tunnel. There was also a change of this type in 2009, but then we spent hours and hours in the tunnel to develop our projects. The regulations were completed too late and we only received all the material on the tires in February. The change had to be managed differently and with many more hours inside the tunnel."

Roberto Valenti