Williams Martini Racing’s Paddy Lowe has admitted the team “haven’t done a good enough job” so far in 2018 as both Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin struggle to get a handle on the FW41.
Williams has seen a return of just four championship points from the first five races of the season courtesy of Stroll’s eighth place in the Azerbaijan. But Lowe’s comments come following the 2018 Spanish Grand Prix in which Stroll managed only eleventh and Sirtokin was last of the runners in fourteenth, three laps behind the winner.
“It’s been a very difficult weekend performance-wise but certainly to get two cars home is a credit to the team,” said Lowe. “For the guys in the garage, it’s the same amount of work despite our pace, so I’m pleased for them that we got both cars to the finish ahead of the test this week.
“With Lance, we narrowly missed the points after a fantastic first lap got him up to 12th, a position he consolidated to finish 11th with really good, consistent pace and tyre management.
“Sergey had a more difficult afternoon suffering with the balance of the car. It got more difficult as he had a lot of lapped cars to manage, which lost him tyre temperatures as a consequence.”
Friday’s running in Barcelona saw Williams’ test and reserve driver Robert Kubica get behind the wheel of the FW41 but even the former race winner struggled to extract pace from the car. Lowe admits that the team haven’t done enough.
“As a team we haven’t done a good enough job with the development of this FW41 and we will keep working hard back at base and at the test this week to come back in a stronger position.”
