"Aerodynamics plays a critical role in determining how
competitive we are for each of the race circuits we visit," said
Alex Burns, Chief Operating Officer, Williams F1. "The optimum
balance of downforce and drag varies between different circuits,
so the aerodynamic challenges at Monaco -- lots of tight corners
with few straights -- are very different from Monza, which has
few corners but lots of long straights. The increase in
supercomputing power from Lenovo will give us the capability to
examine a greater range of design variations between races,
which will increase our development rate, bringing more
performance to the car sooner." The supercomputer is being used
for operations in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), performing
billions of calculations that simulate airflow around a virtual
model of a three-dimensional, on-track racing car. This process
will help predict how even the smallest changes in component
shape and placement will affect drag and downforce, with
resulting impacts on speed and handli