Williams' KERS Will Never Be Used in F1

Unlike the teams that have pumped millions in developing their Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) for the 2009 season, Williams F1 will likely benefit from their investments. And that's because their flywheel mechanical-based system is compliant with a series of commercial applications outside of Formula One.

This is actually what Sir Frank Williams himself argued quite recently, as he confirmed the in-factory built KERS unit “ has got its own life in that direction. It has very useful and truly interesting commercial applications,” as quoted by the Reuters news agency.

Apart from Williams, all the other teams in F1 have based their KERS units on an electric system. Their use was practically limited to Formula One racing only. And, as a result of all F1 teams coming together to agree on the scrapping of KERS for the 2010 season, the money invested into it are practically wasted.

McLaren and Ferrari are still using the unit throughout their 2009 season – the Stuttgart based marque actually confirmed, earlier today, that they will use it race in and race out until November – while Renault and BMW Sauber have decided to put it aside for the remainder of their ongoing campaigns.

Williams has never debuted the unit in F1 and the chances of it never being used inside the sport are close to 100 percent. It would make no sense implementing the unit in the FW31 for the remaining 8 rounds of the 2009 season, especially since the team is now gaining momentum with its currently-developed package.

BMW's technical director Willy Rampf himself admitted that, had he known about the KERS scrap, he wouldn't have designed the unit in the first place and would have focused solely on its aerodynamic package.

“If I'd have known at the time what I know today, I would have designed the (2009) car without KERS. The best approach for sure was to build a car with no compromises, like for example the Red Bull,” Rampf was quoted as saying by spox.com.