Williams has the third quickest car on the grid according to chief technical officer Pat Symonds who also claims their form isn’t track specific.
His comments were made after McLaren’s Eric Boullier said the FW36 would struggle at certain venues whilst excelling at others.
“There is an element of it – always has been, always will be,” he said in response to Boullier’s comments. “Our objective is to design a car that works equally well on all 19 circuits, but none of us achieve that, not even Mercedes.
“But I do think that is a bit of wishful thinking from Eric as well,” he told the official F1 website. “Don’t get me wrong, I do recognise the differences for us at places like Austria, but I still believe we have the third quickest car, and if we use it and develop it properly we will be third quickest at most circuits.
“It is very close this year – no one will say anything other than Mercedes is the best car, in my opinion Red Bull are second, and then you have Ferrari, Force India, Williams and McLaren. That is quite a tight bunch, (but) arguably we have the third-best car at the moment.”
Symonds doesn’t believe the team have made the most of the car’s performance at some races, hence their seven-point deficit to Ferrari in the standings which sees them sitting fourth, rather than third – where Symonds believes they should be.
“I don’t believe up until Austria that we performed or achieved what we should have, for all sorts of reasons,” he said.
“If we are the third-best team, we ought to finish third in the championship – but in 2005 we [Renault] won the championship with Fernando Alonso despite McLaren having the better car. We were a better team and we won by our racing.”
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