Williams believe they understand why their car wasn’t as competitive as expected in Australia.
Despite showing good form during testing, they were off the pace and qualified just 16th and 17th.
Pastor Maldonado declared the car “undriveable” and said the team were back to 2011 form when they scored just five points all season.
Technical chief Mike Coughlan is confident they can turn things around fairly quickly.
“At the moment we don’t have enough grip,” he explained. “That compounds itself in tyre wear and tyre warm up, so I don’t think it’s a specific thing to blame on the tyre. We’re not producing enough grip.”
Asked if it would take several races to fix, he replied: “I don’t think so. The car is so similar to last year’s car and we’ve not changed anything fundamentally. Even though a lot of the components are new, we haven’t changed anything fundamentally.
“What we’ve done is go down an avenue that hasn’t reaped a reward and what we’ve got to do now is take a step back from that and look at some of the set-ups from last year and some of the aerodynamic things we did last year. Then we’ll reassess it and go again. Certainly Malaysia will be an interesting Friday for us.”
He admitted they have taken a step backward with recent upgrades.
“At the first Barcelona test when the car first ran we really thought the car was quite competitive. We haven’t taken it forward and if anything we’ve taken it backwards. Some teams have moved forward – Lotus and Red Bull have looked strong all the time – so I think we’ve got some homework to do yet.”
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