Williams deputy team principal Claire Williams admitted the team are further off the pace at the Australian Grand Prix than they expected to be.

The team had a troubled start to its 2019 F1 season as it failed to complete its first FW42 chassis in time for the start of testing. Although it has two cars running this weekend Robert Kubica revealed yesterday the team is short on parts which is forcing them to run more conservatively

At the end of final practice the quickest Williams was 1.3 seconds off the next-slowest car. Williams admitted she expected her team to be closer to the pace than that.

“It’s not been the start that we hoped for but probably one that we expected,” she told Sky. “We knew that it was going to be tough. We knew that it was going to be difficult from the outset.

“I don’t think we thought we were going to be as far off the pace as we are and that is going to be difficult for us to try and claw back.

“But that’s what we do at Williams, we fight and we keep on fighting and we won’t give up until we make changes and to deliver greater performance. And we need to do that because we’ve got great drivers in George [Russell] and Robert.”

The team is not likely to be in danger of failing to qualify for the season-opening race under the 107% rule. Russell’s best lap of 1’25.944 in final practice was one second faster than 107% of Lewis Hamilton’s pace-setting time of 1’22.292.

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2019 Australian Grand Prix