Carlos Sainz Jnr says Williams need to begin turning their season around at the Miami Grand Prix in May.
The team which finished fifth in the world championship last year currently lies ninth in the standings, with only the two points Sainz scored in the Chinese Grand Prix. He does not expect to see improvement in the next round of the championship at Suzuka.
“Definitely Japan will still be a struggle for us,” said Sainz. “It’s a weight-sensitive track and it’s a downforce-sensitive track, so exactly like [in Shanghai] we will be the ninth car.”
The following two rounds in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been cancelled due to the war in the Middle East. Sainz says Williams must make the best possible use of the extra time to work on their car development before the championship resumes in Miami at the beginning of May.
“I curse everything that’s happening in the world right now and why we’re not going to the Middle East,” he said. “I hate the fact we’re not racing.
“But for us as a team it couldn’t come at a better time because it gives us one month to push on our recovery process, which we needed a lot. Miami, I hope, is the start of a recovery plan.”
Williams team principal James Vowles said they intend to make the most out of the opportunity to work on the FW48. “Every single hour of that break we need in order to get ourselves back on the front foot by the time we come back to Miami,” he said in a video released by the team.
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“Clearly, we haven’t started the season where we wanted to. So that period for us is about taking stock of what we really can change.
“Now, without attrition, we can count on the fact that production can be moved towards future performance. Some of that may come in Miami, some of that after.
“It’s no secret that we’re overweight. The developments will be in that period of time, making sure that we are able to reduce the mass in the car in a sensible fashion.
“We’ll have gone through, by that point, three grands prix, but there’s never enough time after the event to go through every single tiny bit of data and understand really what we should have done in hindsight and what programmes we want to kick off in the future. This provides us a good time to do that.
“The drivers will come back here to the UK and we’ll run our simulator on basically every single day of that, as much as possible. We’ll complete pit stop practice with the crew back here as most of the days that we can as well. So it’ll be more about what do we fit in and what will provide the most bang for buck.”
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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 – when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring journalist, Keith began running the site full-time in 2010, achieving a long-held ambition to dedicate his full attention to his passion for motor racing. View all posts by Keith Collantine