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With many expecting the Grove-based outfit to be pegged to the back of the field after a low-key pre-season test in Bahrain, the squad has impressed greatly and made a good step forward since last season.
Williams’ head of vehicle performance Dave Robson said much of the progress had come from work specifically addressing areas where it thought it had underperformed in 2022 with its FW44.
Asked by Motorsport.com whether the team was surprised to be the second biggest gainer year-on-year, he said: “Obviously, I can’t speak for everyone else, but I think we’ve made good progress because we knew when the FW44 came out that it had some particular weaknesses.
“Throughout last year and into this year, we’ve worked on those, and I think they probably yielded a reasonable step up in performance.
“I think we d …