Williams’ Deputy Team Principal Claire Williams says it is a “point of frustration” that the progress the squad believes it has made with its 2020 car cannot yet be publicly displayed, as it bids to arrest its Formula 1 slump.
Williams regressed to the rear of the 10-team Constructors’ Championship in 2018 and repeated the position last year, as it drifted further away from the midfield pack.
Neither George Russell nor team-mate Robert Kubica made it out of Q1 and it scored just a solitary point, courtesy of Kubica at the rain-hit German Grand Prix.
Williams identified correlation and design issues early in 2019 and enacted structural changes in the hope of halting its decline and lifting itself back towards the midfield.
“I think everyone know, as I’ve talked about it until I’m blue in the face, the amount of work behind the scenes,” Williams said when asked by MotorsportWeek.com about progress for 2020, during an event in Israel.
“It’s still for me a point of frustration that we’re not able to invite everyone in [to the factory] and show everyone the transformation that has taken place at Williams.
“What I’ve always said is it’s going to be a journey, we started it last year, we started seeing the grass shoots, if you like, in the latter half of the year when we were closing the gap steadily but there’s only so much you can do in the course of a season anyway.
“We set ourselves some really tough targets over the winter around aero in particular, about finding performance, and then on some mechanical issues as well and those have been going well.”
Williams went on to explain that “we all just want to come out and show that we’ve done a good job and for people to be able to turn round and go: ‘OK, right. We got it wrong, Williams weren’t on their way out and two years didn’t need to define them and look what they’ve done.'”
Williams’ 2019 woes began prior to the start of the campaign as its FW42 suffered production delays, meaning it was not ready in time for the start of pre-season testing.
Williams is adamant that a new approach for 2020 means it can hit the ground running with its FW43, while also pointing to year-on-year progress regarding the FIA’s mandatory crash tests, having endured numerous failures 12 months ago.
“The key target now is getting the car to the test on time, at the lights when they go green, if not before,” Williams asserted. “I have absolute confidence that will happen.
“As everyone knows, we brought in a whole new planning function last year that works from the start of the process, to the beginnings of the start in aero, right to the end of car assembly.
“We’ve built ourselves a huge amount of contingency. There’s time to ensure that if something does go wrong, you know we’re OK and we’ve got some cover there.
“One of the first signs of success for us over the winter was we passed all our crash tests, most of which we did at the first attempt. Rather than last year, where we failed many of them, even at the sixth attempt we were failing them, which obviously puts even more pressure into your system, because then you’re having to deal with why you failed the crash test rather than worrying about getting the parts out.
“So, that’s been a good milestone for us over the winter.”
