Williams technical director Paddy Lowe has dismissed suggestions his position at the team is under threat.

 As Williams endured a torrid pre-season, which saw them start testing two-and-a-half days late and didn't see the full car take to the track until the second week, reports claimed the former Mercedes chief was responsible for the issues.

Reasons ranged from a design flaw which had to be rectified to simple bad planning but Lowe, who was publicly absolved of any blame by the team, refused to be drawn.

"I have not paid attention to what has been said in the media," he was quoted by GPFans.com. "I'm working very hard, and there is a lot of work to be done. But we are working well as a team."

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Deputy team boss Claire Williams also rejects rumours of problems with suppliers or financial issues playing a role and instead appeared to concede it was an operational flaw within the Grove factory.

"There are 22-odd thousand parts to a car, which we have to design, manufacture, assemble, and then put through crash testing etcetera and that's an enormous job," she said.

"We just didn't make it for a number of reasons and I think it can happen, and I think we've seen historically that it can happen.

"It's clearly not what we wanted to happen," Williams admitted. "It's compromised our test programme to a degree we're obviously trying to make up for the time that we lost, and I hope that when we get to Australia, or probably a bit further down the line, we will have forgotten about it and moved forward."

As for what will happen next to ensure this doesn't happen again in 2020...

"There hasn't been any time [for an internal debrief on the issues]. A lot of people that would have been involved in any after-action review are clearly busy concentrating on the programme here," she noted.

"There is some work that's has been started, but it will probably take us a few weeks to fully compile that, and we have to get it right because if we don't get the review right we're not going to get next year's programme right."