Upstaged by Force India in Sunday’s Belgian GP, Williams has now lost fourth place in the constructors standings, a state of affairs which deputy team principal Claire Williams will not accept.
Williams’ relative performance has obviously regressed since the summer started while Force India has performed fairly consistently, and competitively.
Currently Williams appears to have its work cut out for it to recoup some momentum and fourth place in the championship, but Williams says that is the priority, both on the sporting and financial front.
“We’ve got some issues at the moment with tyre management and aero etc,…” she told ESPN.
“I am worried because losing fourth place in the championship means losing quite a lot of dollars as well in your prize money income, so it’s not something that we can allow to happen and we are going to have to work really hard if we are going to hold them off.
“I know that Force India would love nothing more than to take fourth place and that for us would be extremely disappointing.”
DRIVER RATINGS: Belgian Grand Prix
Worried of the financial impact losing a spot in the standings implies, Williams admits the team needs to get back on track while acknowledging Force India’s threat.
“I think because you’ve got the three teams at the top that are taking the top six positions, Williams and Force India and we are scrapping around for one, two, three points and maybe the odd occasion of being bumped up if there’s a reliability issue or whatever.
“So [the battle with Force India] that really does worry me. That’s not what I wanted and that’s a result of some very disappointing races where we should have capitalised on circuits that suited our car, but we made a number of mistakes.”
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