Williams has finished third in the constructors' championship for the past two seasons, despite not having won a race since the 2012 season.

Inevitably, the Grove-based team has been held back by its smaller budget compared to its main rivals.

And while Williams says she would want her team to fight for victories, she concedes the realities of the budget make it almost impossible.

"If you look at it from a pure racer's perspective, and idealistic perspective, then of course it is disappointing, because we want to be up there fighting at the top," she told Motorsport.com.

"But we have to bear in mind where we came from, and how far ahead Mercedes were when we all came out in 2014. It has just been a continuous game of playing catch-up.

"Ferrari obviously have done a really good job trying to close that gap and we are in the position we are in. It is not just a case of staying in the position we are in, we have had to make gains forward in order to maintain that third position and fight for that third with Red Bull.

"I think we can consider ourselves to have done a good job and we should be proud of the job we have done to be in that position, fighting against teams – and I know we say it repeatedly and it is boring – but teams with budgets three times the size of ours and keeping the teams who are behind us, behind us.

"And I think we should be proud of that. But from a racer perspective, we want to be up there fighting with Mercedes."

Hard to find right balance

Williams, whose team has dropped to fourth this year behind Red Bull, admits finding the right balance between budget and development is tricky.

"It is a frustrating," she added. "We have working groups that meet regularly at Williams as part of our exco (executive committee) and we have to decide which projects to put our resource in to.

"And of course you don't want to be sat there saying, 'well of course you cannot have this because we need to do this as a priority over what you want' and everyone's needs are to them as important as anyone else's, so it is a really juggling game.

"You throw on top of that that we have new regulations coming in in 2017, so what do you do with 2016's car and where do you strike the balance around that development work as well. But we have a really great team at Williams.

"A really clever group of people who are trying to make sure that we put the resource into where it needs to go to, to get the maximum benefits and returns for the team and car."

Interview by Jonathan Noble