Williams looking solid

Whilst the majority of chatter from the three winter tests have revolved around Mercedes and Red Bull Racing, there is another team stealing headlines.

And that team is Williams.

Having switched from Renault to Mercedes at the end of last season, the Didcot boys have probably had a smirk throughout all three winter test sessions at Jerez and Bahrain.

The team have gone from Renault power, which has proved to be the most unreliable of the power-trains thus far in testing, to Mercedes which has proved to be the most reliable.

That has aided Williams start to testing which as yet, has yet to see a reliability failure whilst on track.

In fact Williams are the only team yet to bring out a red flag to a session, by suffering a break down on circuit.

On Thursday for example, Williams completed a perfect test schedule, completing a race simulation and some lower fuel runs on way to completing 128 laps, or 430 miles if you prefer.

‘We knew it could be difficult and we’ve had some problems, we’ve lost some days and some days we didn’t do so much mileage. But now, my last two days have been exactly to plan and that should be our target,’ Valtteri Bottas told Sky Sports.

Williams have certainly got plenty of mileage under the belt, something that a lot of the teams, in particular the Renault powered cars would be envious of.

But now the focus shifts on to performance and pace.

‘It gives confidence that we can run the car pretty much all the time without problems. On long runs, cooling-wise, everything has been on target.’

‘We need to be focusing on how quick the car is not how easy it is, But driveability-wise, I think this season there’s more work to be done from pedal maps and also the engine side to make it more smooth with all the torque.

‘There’s a lot of different things, a lot more to set-up with this car than last year’s.’

Just how good could Williams be this year?

With Mercedes power, Williams, Force India, McLaren and of course Mercedes themselves will be hoping to take an early season advantage into the opening few races of the season.