Williams will fully commit to their 2020 project despite the “opportunity” to improve under the new 2021 regulations.
The historic outfit has languished at the back of the field for the past two seasons, fortuitously scoring their only point at Hockenheim, when Robert Kubica was promoted to 10th after both Alfa Romeo’s were disqualified.
But while it might make sense for a team in Williams’ predicament to effectively give up next year to focus on 2021, ensuring the flaws in the development process are gone is an important mission for the Grove-based squad.
“Now we’ve got a much better understanding of the regs for 2021 then we need to sit down and time exactly how we go about it,” senior race engineer Dave Robson told RaceFans.
“Undoubtedly we’re going to work out how to divide the resources up, but you would never write next year off.
“We’ve got to prove to ourselves and to everyone else that what we’ve done this year was correct and if it is and we can keep developing that, that will still help the development of the 2021 car. So we’re definitely not writing off next year.”
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Development of next year’s car has been underway for some time, with driver George Russell satisfied that progress is being made.
“We knew that it’s not going to necessarily unlock a lot of performance on the car as it is now – but it’s definitely looking promising going into next year,” he explained via Crash.net.
“Overall, the car is definitely nicer to drive. I mean, at the start of the year it was not nice at all, let’s say, and it was pretty tricky just to get around a lap.
“But we’ve done a good job to fine-tune the balance, just to make it a nicer car to drive – but now we need to rely on the engineers back at the factory to bolt some more downforce on it.”
That being said, Robson does realise the importance of Williams capitalising on the new cars and regulations to move up the grid.
“It’s a good opportunity to have a little bit of a reset and then hopefully put into practice what we’ve been learning the last year and what we’ll continue to learn into next year,” he agreed.
“Obviously there’s a few bits of the puzzle left to put together. But I think it’s just a good opportunity to wipe the slate clean and have a good look at everything from a new perspective.”