Lopez says battling big teams is unacceptably risky

Williams finds itself in the same predicament as Lotus, when the Enstone team tried to push towards the very top of Formula 1, claims Gerard Lopez.

The low-profile-in-2015 Lotus team owner, who is currently in the midst of Renault buyout rumours and legal trouble with unpaid suppliers insists Lotus is actually back on track, having learned from 2012 and 2013, when Kimi Raikkonen even won a couple of races in a black and gold car.

"What I would not do again, perhaps, is that when you are fourth or fifth, try to gamble in going for first place," he said recently to Auto Motor und Sport.

Now, he sees the independent British team Williams in the same sort of situation.

"Williams is in the same position now as we were two years ago. To try to be third, you need to put yourself in a position of unacceptable risk," he is quoted by the German magazine.

After the performance and budget collapse of 2014, Lotus has re-set its objectives in 2015, and Lopez - highly-critical of the income distribution system in F1 - says the fight to be fifth is now the right one.

So while the earlier media coverage was about Lotus stretching itself with debt, now the reports are about the supposed cusp of liquidation.

"Before, we couldn't count. Now it's said that we're broke, just because we only spend as much as we have," said Lopez.