VALENCIA, Spain -- Let's talk about that nose.

You can't ignore it. You can't stop yourself from looking at it. And you can't stop wondering just how competitive it will make the new Williams BMW FW26.

While Formula One is a highly technical sport in most ways, the rules are so restrictive in some areas, such as bodywork, that the cars can end up looking pretty much the same until you get down to the details. But you won't have any trouble picking out the FW26 from the F1 crowd thanks to its short, blunt nose cone and the two big "tusks" that protrude out to carry the big front wing.

That nose gives the Williams a distinctive and radical look, but the 26th car that Williams has created is not the most beautiful car that the team has designed.

"I don't think it is very pretty," team owner Sir Frank Williams said of the FW26. "But I shall certainly fall in love with it if it is a winner!"

Williams' partner and technical director Patrick Head oversaw the design process along with chief aerodynamicist Antonia Terzi and chief designer Gavin Fisher.

"It is much worse from Frank's point of view because he hasn't got as much space in terms of marketing exposure on the upper surface," Head quipped of the car's short nose cone. "But knowing Frank for a long time, he will be happy with it if it is fast. Generally I agree: I don't think that it is a thing of beauty, but if things are fast they tend to look pretty good."

The new Williams BMW FW26 certainly looked pretty good in its first shakedown. Just hours after the car was unveiled, Juan Pablo Montoya got to within one second of the lap record here at Spain's Valencia circuit.

	Behold the nose in all its glory as Juan Pablo Montoya takes the new Williams car for a spin.

Montoya said he thought it would feel weird driving a car with such a different front end treatment, but once inside the cockpit he said it just felt normal. From the outside, however, you just couldn't stop looking at that nose.

In the simplest terms, Williams went with the design to improve airflow over and under the car.

"For us it is a clear advantage, otherwise we would not have gone with it," Head said. "If it wasn't better we would not have put it on the car. The car was developed out of aerodynamic CFD studies and evaluation in the wind tunnel. It is not a styling exercise; it is an exercise to maximize downforce and minimize drag.

"I am not going to talk about the details of exactly what we achieved with it. Some of the changes were quite subtle and changed the geometry of the aerodynamic map, which is fairly complex as the car moves up and down vertically, as it changes pitch, as it rolls, and as it develops a yaw attitude in the corner where the airflow isn't approaching it from straight on, when, as you steer the front wheels, it has quite complex influences on the aerodynamics and the balance of the forces. It is all very much tied up in that aero map."

It's rumored that at least one other F1 team has come up with a similar solution for its 2004 car. What can't happen, however, is another team looking at the Williams' design, copying it, and bolting on a similar front nose and wing to its already designed 2004 car.

"On the aerodynamics side," Head said, "everything is enormously interactive. Once you have chosen a particular front wing geometry, then what is the optimum geometry behind that is going to be conditioned by that front wing because the front wing conditions the airflow that flows over the rest of the car. And, equally, when you change the front wing, the geometry that you have chosen for your rear diffuser is then not optimum. And you go around the loop changing."

Renault to copy?

Renault will assess the aerodynamics of the innovative nose on Williams' new Formula One car and could copy it, according to the team's director of engineering. "The Williams appears interesting and logical," said Pat Symonds on Thursday at the Autosport International show in Birmingham, England. "We'll look at it in the wind tunnel soon and other teams will be trying it as well, I'm sure. "We could incorporate the idea into our 2004 car," he added. "But really you can't look at one part in isolation. You need to understand the whole concept otherwise you won't get very far." Renault's 2004 car is due to be launched Jan. 29 in Palermo, Sicily. -- Reuters

The whole thing not only works from front to back, but also from back to front.

"Aerodynamic things from the rear affect what happen in the front as well," Head said. "It doesn't necessarily mean that if somebody bolts on a new nose like Williams that their car will immediately get better aerodynamic figures. Maybe somebody will try it, but I don't necessarily think that this will be the future shape of noses in F1."

Nor does Williams have a contingent plan to bolt on a conventional nose if this system proves to be a failure.

"It might sound a bit presumptuous, but we are confident that it will work out," Head said.

The Williams concept also incorporates a "twin keel" front suspension system. In a "single keel" system, the lower arms of the front suspension meet up at a single "keel" underneath the center of the front of the car. With a twin system, two "keels" extend outwards on either side of the front of the car, and the lower front suspension arms attach to those.

By keeping the lower suspension pieces out of the central underneath portion of the car, a twin keel system keeps all that clutter out of the airflow. McLaren, Jordan and Sauber used twin keels in 2003. The disadvantage is that you have to add more weight to the front part of the car to support the suspension hanging out there on the two keels.

"Twin keel is something we have looked at before in the wind tunnel," Head said. "The advantages were there but were small, and there are some very considerable constructional disadvantages. In order to retain the stiffness you have to really put a lot of strength and weight in what is very much an off axis load from the very highly loaded forward blade of the front wishbone.

"The aerodynamic advantages did not previously outweigh the constructional disadvantages. But we did more work on the aerodynamic side and the constructional side and eventually came to the conclusion that is was worth us going in that direction."

One of the biggest challenges the Williams engineers faced with the new nose and front wing was passing the strict FIA crash tests.

"We have made considerable advances in the energy absorption process," Head explained. "The main body of the nose is shorter (than in 2003), but by the way it collapses, and with the length of it that collapses (because we weren't using the full length of it before), we have been able to keep the longitudinal forces down."

The Williams engineers also worked on making sure those protruding tusks that support the front wing wouldn't penetrate through a side impact structure or the side of a monocoque of another car in the event of a collision.

Of course, there is a lot more to the new Williams BMW FW26 than just that prominent nose and wing. Like every F1 team, Williams and BMW went through every aspect of the car to see where performance could be gained.

But in the end, you just can't stop looking at that nose.

Dan Knutson covers Formula One for National Speed Sport News and ESPN.com.