Williams will continue to push on with the development of this year’s car and hope to see gains in the coming races.
That is the line from deputy team boss Claire Williams as the British team tries to overcome the significant hurdles they have faced since the start of the season.
“We can see some light at the end of the tunnel now. It may be slow but we all know that it takes time to bring performance to your car,” she was quoted by PlanetF1 as saying.
“The aero team are doing a great job finding performance in the tunnel and we’re going to be bringing that to races over the coming weeks and months with a package coming midway through the season that we will hope will bring some significant performance to us.
“There are definitely signs of improvement.”
Given the performance deficit remains stubbornly high, however, Williams was asked why the team don’t try and put themselves in a stronger position with next year’s design.
“No, nothing is a write-off at Williams, ever. It never has been and it never would be, regardless of where we are,” she replied.
“For us, at the moment, we’re really looking at ’19 and ’20 very much as almost two seasons [combined].
“It’s just evolution and development and we’ve just got to keep bringing performance at each and every race.
“We’ve definitely seen that we’ve done that, we’re closing the gap to the ninth-placed team and we’ve got to keep doing that as the season progresses.”
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Performance engineer Dave Robson also explained why it was beneficial for Williams to continue pushing for the next two months at least.
“Coming into this year we did change the philosophy of the car for good reason,” he said.
“Now we need to see whether we are just a little bit behind the curve and can catch up, or actually if we’ve made a mistake and might have to go back [to an older philosophy].
“That is the main theme between now and the [summer] break.”