Following a difficult Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, Williams Formula 1 team principal James Vowles has confirmed that the weaknesses plaguing the Grove outfit’s challenger will not be fixed in the immediate future. However, he remains optimistic, insisting that there is still time to salvage their season.
Williams arrived at pre-season testing in Bahrain already on the back foot, having missed private testing in Barcelona and with an overweight car. While some upgrades introduced for the Miami Grand Prix resulted in crucial championship points in Miami, Montreal and Monaco, the recent race in Barcelona exposed some of the car’s flaws.
Speaking in a recent Vowles Verdict episode, the team chief explained that he hopes the worst of their struggles are behind them, but admitted that there is still a long way to go.
“My expectation is that we won’t be as exposed as badly as Barcelona, but some of those issues won’t be rectified in the short term,” he said.
He added, “What you see in Barcelona is more of a blip relating to some of these characteristics of the track and elements that are not right in the car. And we do have a highlight of certainly some of those and a plan for the season as to how we rectify and fix a number of them as well.
Carlos Sainz, Williams
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
“At the same time, there is a good performance pipeline coming. It won’t be in one go. There’ll be some elements around Silverstone, maybe pushing into Spa. There will be some elements as we go towards the August break, and quite a lot as we go past the August break, where we bring really quite a new car to the track.
“Now, that feels like a long way off, and it feels like it’s late in the season. The reality is we’re only one-third of the way through the season now. And even post-August break, when I’m talking about you’ll still have nine races or so left to go out of 22 or 23, subject to what happens this year.
“The point I’m making behind that is we have time to remedy this and fix it, but we need to make sure we bring that performance in a timely fashion to the car.”
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