Williams: We’ve got spares for all the parts that we need

The Pole cited a broken floor on the FW42 in Melbourne which was not replaced and in the end made a difference to the car's performance. he also mentioned that he would be avoiding the kerbs so as to lessen the risk of breakages.

However during FP1, on Friday, team principal Claire Williams contradicted her driver when she was asked by Sky F1 to clarify the situation, “We have a little bit of a backlog from not having got the car out when we needed to in testing. But everyone’s worked really hard at the factory to make sure we’ve got the spares we need."

"To be honest, we’ve got spares for all the parts that we need, we’ve just got to make sure the drivers don’t do anything on track to jeopardise that."

"A lot of teams anyway at this time of year are in a similar position. Clearly, we didn’t help ourselves. Anyway, it’s not anything I’m overly concerned about. I think it’s probably obvious from the timesheets where we are."

"I don’t think that’s necessarily down to the fact that we missed those two days of testing, that’s just the car that we’ve got. As you would expect we’ve got a plan in place back at the factory to make sure that we try and make up as much as the delta that we’ve got, even just to P9 at the moment, and that’s the focus for everybody.”

The Williams deputy team principal went on to add that she believed Bahrain will be kinder to the car than Australia where they were woefully off the pace.

At the end of FP1 in Bahrain, both Williams drivers were at the bottom of the timesheets, with rookie George Russell 19th and Robert Kubica 20th - the pair separated by less than a tenth but the gap to the top time almost four seconds.