Photo: Alain Prost’s Williams FW15C in the pit garage at the 1993 British Grand Prix © Martin Lee, London, UK Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) You are free to share and adapt this work under the same license, with proper attribution.
© Martin Lee, London, UK
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
You are free to share and adapt this work under the same license, with proper attribution.
When you think of dominant F1 cars, the Ferrari F2004 (winning 15 races, 8 one-two wins) or Red Bull’s RB19 may come to mind, but if you look deep down? There are a lot of stories.
Let’s go back to the early 1990s, and no car sparked more fear on the grid than the Williams FW14B, dominated and was just unstoppable.
So what was its secret weapon? Active suspension, a wildly advanced system that made rivals look outdated overnight.
But what made it so special? And how did this tech revolution become one of F1’s greatest banned innovations?
What Even Is Active Suspension?
Imagine a car that reads the track and adjusts itself before hitting bumps, corners, or braking zones. That’s exactly what Williams achieved.
At its core, active suspension was a hydraulic and electronic system that controlled each wheel independently, it was not just reacting, it was predicting.
The car could stay perfectly level, no matter what the track threw at it. That meant:
- Consistent ride height = stable downforce.
- No pitch under braking, no roll in corners.
- Aero advantage all the way down the straight.
That alone was revolutionary. But Williams didn’t stop at the mechanical bits.
Who built it? Team behind the tech
It took a dream team to pull this off. While many credit Frank Dernie (who worked on early active suspension at Lotus), it was Patrick Head, Adrian Newey, and a young engineer named Paddy Lowe who turned theory into something unstoppable back in the early of 90s, even Senna dreamt of joining Williams back in the day.
- Patrick Head led the project with engineering grit.
- Adrian Newey shaped the FW14B’s aero, knowing the car’s height would never fluctuate—so he pushed design boundaries.
- Paddy Lowe built the electronic brain, writing code that allowed the system to predict weight transfer and adjust in real time.
This wasn’t a passive mechanical hack. It was a fully active, software-controlled ride, way ahead of its time.
The performance? Utter devastation.
Williams tested active vs. passive setups at Estoril. The active version? Two full seconds a lap faster. And that wasn’t just in testing.
Here’s what happened in 1992 with the FW14B, stats below:
- Nigel Mansell won 9 of the 16 races.
- He secured the title with five races to go—a record at the time.
- The team took 15 pole positions and led over 80% of all race laps.
- Teammate Riccardo Patrese added a win of his own.
They didn’t just win, they humiliated the competition. Senna, Schumacher, Berger? They couldn’t touch them. Williams was in a league of its own, just unstoppable.
And it continued in 1993 with the FW15C. This time, with Alain Prost, Williams dominated again:
- Another Constructors’ title.
- Prost’s fourth World Championship.
- A massive points gap between them and McLaren.
By then, the car had ABS, traction control, fully active aero, it was an F1 computer on wheels.
So, How did it work exactly?
Let’s break it down simply:
- Each corner of the car had hydraulic actuators.
- Sensors measured body movement, wheel loads, acceleration, and driver inputs.
- The ECU calculated the ideal ride height and stiffness.
- Actuators adjusted in milliseconds, keeping the car flat through every phase, cornering, braking, accelerating.
It even had a “low-mode” for straights, where the car would squat for lower drag and more speed, then raise again for corners.
A backup system would drop the car completely if it failed, helping it glide to a safe stop, just in case.
Why didn’t everyone copy it?
Other teams tried. McLaren dabbled with their own version, Lotus had early reactive versions.
The fact is, none could match the seamless integration that Williams achieved. They didn’t just bolt it on, they built the entire car around it.
And by the time teams caught up, it was already too late, Williams just dominated!
Why it was banned?
In 1994, the FIA banned active suspension, along with many electronic driver aids. The reason? F1 had become a tech arms race. Human skill was taking a backseat to algorithms and hydraulic logic.
F1 went back to passive suspensions. But the memory of the FW14B, and what it did to the grid, still lingers.
Williams’ team: A tech masterpiece
Today, the FW14B is considered one of the most advanced racing cars ever built. It’s a reminder that brilliance in F1 often comes from being bold enough to reinvent the rules.
In just two seasons, active suspension helped Williams:
- Win two Constructors’ titles
- Secure two Drivers’ Championships
- Rewrite what was possible in race engineering.
And then, just like that, it was gone.
What can we say more about it?
F1 has always been a sport of trying to bring something new, something that works. But sometimes, a breakthrough is too good. Williams’ active suspension wasn’t just ahead of its time, it embarrassed the rest of the grid. In doing so, it became a part of F1 folklore.
Today, as teams chase tenths with floor tweaks and wind tunnel runs, it’s hard not to look back and think, what if active suspension had never been banned?
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