Williams F1 will use battery-powered KERS

Frank Williams' team has abandoned the Volano recovery system project and will use a battery-powered device for the 2011 season.

The announcement comes directly from Sam Michael, the team's technical director, who revealed that the team is designing the entire system itself, including the batteries: “Everything is done in our factory. Only the battery cells are purchased externally.”

During the 2009 season the team had developed a flywheel Kers but the system never made its debut in Formula One and is currently used by Porsche in GT competitions.

For 2011 at Grove they have decided to take a new direction and Williams Hybrid Power is busy designing an energy recovery system that is more conventional and similar to other teams.

Of the old Kers Sir Frank revealed: “..it was so big that we would have had to build a car as huge as one of London's double decker buses”.

Robert Ferrari