Williams is expecting to see some improvement on their dismal 2018 season but warned a full recovery remains a “work in progress”.
The historic British team dropped to the back of the grid last season, as an attempted change in design philosophy resulted in a flawed car which proved very hard for their drivers to control.
In fact, Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin only managed a combined seven points, Williams’ third-lowest points total for a single season, leaving them bottom of the Constructors’ Championship.
However, heading into 2019, deputy team boss Claire Williams reports moral remains high as her father’s team looks to rebound.
“The atmosphere is good actually, I have to say. Everyone’s working really hard,” she told Racer.
“We’ve obviously had the plan that we’ve put in place around car development that’s been ongoing for a while now and that’s been going I think probably as we would expect.
“I think it’s a case of we clearly have got to wait and see until we get to testing to see what everyone else is doing so it’s quite difficult to judge the progress we’re making at this point.
“We’re pretty happy that we have resolved some of the key issues that we had last year but our recovery is still very much a work in progress.”
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Indeed, Williams stressed that the changes at the Grove-based operation go well beyond just trying to fix the problems with the car.
“There’s lots of other work that has been going on around the business as a whole that we’ve undertaken that we talked about last year,” Claire noted. “Making sure that the business and its structure, processes and resources are all fit for purpose.
“So we’re doing a huge amount of work making sure that everything is set up in the right way for us to do the job that we need to in order to ensure that our recovery plan goes according to plan if that makes sense.”
At this point, Williams remains one of only two teams, the other being Haas, to confirm when their new car will be launched ahead of pre-season testing on February 18.