Williams has warned its Formula 1 rivals that there is “more to come” from the upgrades it introduced at the Canadian Grand Prix last weekend.
The new parts were fitted to Alexander Albon’s car, who impressed en route to a seventh-place result in Montreal.
Team Principal James Vowles asserted that Williams didn’t have the outright pace to belong in seventh, but praised the Grove-based squad’s execution of the race to get into the position.
The result saw Williams jump AlphaTauri in the Constructors’ Championship as it scored its best result in almost two years.
When asked if the team is confident that the upgrades correlated from the simulator to the track amid mixed conditions in Montreal, Vowles said: “It’s difficult to answer the question fully as we stand here, simply because it was very limited amount of dry running in free practice and the race was still interfered by other circumstances.
“Typically to correlate a package you need a good amount of laps in ISO conditions to properly understand where you have.
“I don’t think we really have enough to say ‘Has it reached its full potential?’
“It certainly looks that way on the data from free practice but we’ll need more tracks and time to ascertain that.
“Is there more performance to come? I suspect so, every time you introduce a package to the car, it takes a few iterations to get it absolutely nailed on in terms of the set up window you want to be operating in.
“So expect more to come across the next few races.”
Williams’ upgrades included modifications to its sidepods, engine cover and floor, as well as the rear wing and rear suspension.
While the new parts were focused on improving downforce levels, Williams says it expects its package will remain strong at high-speed circuits such as Canada.
“The upgrades that went on the car are ones that are generating downforce, just vertical load on the car,” Vowles said.
“That will, depending on the track, give you more or less performance fundamentally, just depending on how sensitive it is to that downforce number.
“But ultimately, it will make us quicker at all tracks. However the base property that we have in the car where it is better at tracks with good straight-line content will remain the same.”
