Williams finally managed to get a car to the end of a grand prix today in Shanghai, but will leave China without any points to their name after Rubens Barrichello and Pastor Maldonado came home thirteenth and eighteenth respectively.
“There is nothing satisfying about finishing out of the points,” said technical director Sam Michael. “Reliability-wise, however, it was positive to get both cars to the finish. There were stages during the race when our performance was respectable so we need to focus on those areas and improve our qualifying pace. We have some sound upgrades planned for Istanbul and we will be concentrating our efforts on those.”
Barrichello is well aware that the FW33 lacks performance compared to their rivals, but is determined to help Williams become more competitive as the season progresses. “We opted for a two-stop strategy today, others did three, but I don't think that made a difference,” said the Brazilian. “The car isn't performing as well as it should. I am going to work hard to help the team improve it. I need this car to be performing better and I know we can make it happen.”
Team-mate Maldonado now finally has an entire grand prix under his belt, but he also recognises the need to find more speed from this car. “I'm pleased that we finished the race because we now have more data to analyse how the FW33 is working over a race distance which we haven't had to date,” he said. “My car felt ok, but we need to find more speed and improve our performance. We have a long gap between now and Turkey to look over the data and make improvements.”