Valtteri Bottas believes Williams has fallen further behind frontrunners Mercedes and Ferrari and should brace itself for a "tough year".
Bottas qualified 1.660 seconds adrift of Lewis Hamilton in Bahrain – double the gap a year previously – whilst Felipe Massa's deficit in Australia was the same, leading Bottas to believe the gap between them, Ferrari and Mercedes has increased, pushing Williams back toward Red Bull and Toro Rosso.
"It’s been quite a tough first couple of races, especially for me with the unlucky things happening. I’m just looking forward to getting a nice clean weekend and seeing what kind of results we can actually do with a proper weekend," said Bottas on Thursday.
"But it seems that it’s going to be a really tough year for us, very close. Ferrari and Mercedes are definitely more far away now than the last two years so that’s unfortunate. But we just need to keep trying, getting closer.
"After them we are in that field of a few teams, Red Bull and Toro Rosso, they seem to be very close. So every single bit we can improve this season is going to make a big difference."
Meanwhile Bottas is interested to see how Williams performs in the wet – an area of concern last year – with rain expected during qualifying on Saturday.
"I think we haven’t really seen how competitive we are in the wet yet," he added. "That would be nice to see if we’ve made any progress because it’s been something we’ve been struggling for the last two years, so we will see."
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