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Williams' deputy team boss, Claire Williams, insists that her charges are on schedule to get 2020 off to a positive note by attending the opening days of pre-season testing.
In 2019 Williams missed the opening two days of pre-season testing and didn’t hit the track until midday on the third day.
As such, they had just five full days of running in which to iron out any bugs with their FW42.
Unfortunately for the team it was apparent from the very first run that the car was not up to scratch.
This year Williams is confident the team will have the car waiting in the pit lane when the light goes green.
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Williams told AutoSport: “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 these have been going well.
“Obviously the key target now is getting the car to that test on time – and at the lights when they go green, if not before. And I have absolute confidence that that will happen.”
Contingency plan
The team’s 2020 challenger, which will be driven by George Russell and Nicholas Latifi, has already passed all its mandatory FIA crash tests.
Williams added: “We’ve built ourselves a huge amount of contingency time to ensure that if something does go wrong, we’re OK and we’ve got some cover there. One of the first signs of success for us is that we passed all our crash tests, and most of which we did at the first attempt rather than like last year where we failed many of them: even at the sixth attempt.
“That obviously puts even more pressure into the system because then you’re having to deal with a crash test rather than worrying about getting the car out. So that’s been a good milestone for us over the winter.”
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