Williams engineers asked if entire F1 car could be stripped of paint

The Grove-based squad has been removing paint from its FW44 over the past few races, with the first stage happening in Australia and further tweaks being made for the recent Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

The changes, which are aimed at helping reduce the car’s weight, have resulted in some of the blue paint that featured on the nose, engine cover and sidepods being stripped back to leave only raw carbon fibre.

The request from engineering to reduce car weight by tweaking the…