Williams Debuts Their 2022 F1 Car With A New Look And A New Driver

Williams, one of Formula 1‘s longest-standing teams, has just unveiled their car for the 2022 season. Called the FW44, it comes with an all-new look as well as a new driver.

After six years of Martini liveries and two more years of generic white and blue, Williams switched to a bold blue, white, and yellow retro-inspired livery for 2021. This season, they’ve gone in a completely different direction yet again.

The new livery is predominantly navy blue, and ditches the white and yellow for subtle teal and red accents. Overall, the design is very classy, and we’re especially fond of the Williams “W” on the engine cover created by contrasting shades of blue.

The car they debuted the livery on was just the generic F1 show car, but later that day, the team took the real one out for a shakedown around the Silverstone circuit. That car showed some particularly interesting design details, such as a rounded nose, S-shaped endplate canards, a square center intake, gaping D-shaped side pod intakes, and a very narrow, tightly-packaged engine cover.

Additionally, contrary to every other team that has revealed their 2022 car so far, Williams has a slightly updated driver lineup. In place of George Russell, who has since taken Valtteri Bottas‘ place at Mercedes (with Bottas moving to Alfa Romeo), former Red Bull driver Alex Albon will be driving alongside Nicholas Latifi in the Mercedes-engined FW44.

Williams managed to improve their standings in the Constructors’ Championship from dead last (10th) in 2020 to 8th in 2021, so with this year’s clean-sheet design and tighter cost cap, they hope they will be able to at least return to the midfield.

There are still four teams that have yet to reveal their cars, the dates of which are as follows:

Ferrari F1-75 – February 17

Mercedes W13 – February 18

Alpine A522 – February 22

Alfa Romeo C42 – February 27